J\  Southerner 
In  Europe 


CLARENCE  M.POE 


y 


% 


6f 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 


PRESENTED  BY 

PROF. CHARLES  A.  KOFOID  AND 

MRS.  PRUDENCE  W.  KOFOID 


A  Southerner  in  Europe 


BEING  CHIEFLY  SOME  OLD  WORLD 
LESSONS  FOR  NEW  WORLD  NEEDS 
AS  SET  FORTH  IN  FOURTEEN  LETTERS 
OF  FOREIGN  TRAVEL       ::      ::      ::      :: 


CLARENCE  HAMILTON  POE 

Editor  of  The  Progressive  Farmer   and    Southern   Farm   Gazette, 

and   Joint  Author  of   "Cotton:  Its  Cultivation, 

Marketing,  Manufacture,  Etc' 


MUTUAL  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 
RALEIGH.  N.  C. 


COPYRIGHT,  DECEMBER,  1908 

BY 
CLARENCE  HAMILTON  POE 


FIRST  EDITION,   DECEMBER.    1908, 
SECOND  EDITION,  OCTOBER.  1909. 


/fof 


DEDICATION: 
TO  ALL  ALERT-MINDED  SOUTHERNERS 

WHO  FIND 

LESSONS  FOR  OUR  TIME  IN  THE  HISTORY 
OF  OTHER  TIMES.  AND  FOR  OUR  COUNTRY 
IN  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  OTHER  COUNTRIES 


ANNOUNCEMENT 


The  fourteen  newspaper  letters  which  make  up 
this  Httle  volume  were  not  written  with  any- 
thought  of  publishing  them  in  book  form.  The 
demand  from  partial  readers  that  they  be  pub- 
lished in  this  fashion,  however,  led  to  the  print- 
ing of  a  considerable  edition  late  in  December 
of  last  year,  and  this  edition  having  been  quickly 
exhausted,  the  author  and  the  publishers  are 
glad  to  show  their  appreciation  of  public  favor 
by  bringing  out  this  second  edition  in  larger  type 
and  handsomer  binding. 

It  is  not  unlikely  that  the  author  will  later  visit 
Japan,  China,  India,  and  South  Africa,  studying 
conditions  in  these  countries,  (especially  the  re- 
lations of  the  backward  and  the  advanced  races), 
with  even  more  direct  reference  to  Southern  con- 
ditions than  was  attempted  with  regard  to  Eu- 
rope in  the  purely  journalistic  letters  of  the 
present  volume.  A  fuller  announcement  as  to 
this  plan  will  appear  later. 


M310009 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


I.  BACK    TO    THE    OLD    ANCESTRAL    HOME: 

A  FOREWORD  13 

Europe  is  not  a  foreign  country;  it  is  our  old 
home — ^And  the  Europeans  are  all  our  kinsfolk — 
Europe's  larger  perspective  shows  that  the  world 
is  growing  better — The  truth  about  "the  good 
old  days" — Two  big  facts  to  keep  in  mind. 

II.  NOTES  OF  PASSAGE  ACROSS  THE  ATLAN- 

TIC    21 

In  the  fogs  off  the  "Banks"  of  Newfoundland — 
"The  solitary  inhabitants  of  an  ocean-covered 
planet" — The  Atlantic  and  the  Pacific  contrasted 
— ^A  prayer  for  "Our  Gracious  Sovereign,  King 
Edward." 

III.  ENGLAND  AND  SCOTLAND:  A  FAIR  LAND 

LET  DOWN  OUT  OF  HEAVEN 27 

The  spirit  of  the  writer's  letters — "Land  of 
brown  heath  and  shaggy  wood" — The  beauty 
of  Rural  Scotland — Scotland  vs.  Virginia — ^A 
glimpse  of  English  farming — Among  the  Haunts 
of  Robbie  Burns — Environment  and  spirit  of 
Scott,  Burns  and  Wordsworth. 

IV.  ENGLAND'S   CITIES,   PEOPLE,   AND   POS- 

TAL SYSTEM  36 

A  vivid  impression  of  differences  in  time — Cot- 
ton "the  most  barbarously  handled  commercial 
product  in  the  world" — Liverpool  and  the  slave 
trade — How  internal  improvements  saved  Glas- 
gow— Common  names  more  familiar  than  in  New 
York  or  Boston — English  royalty  a  lifeless, 
make-believe  formalism — Nearly  as  many  voters 
as  in  America — Efficiency  of  the  English  Post- 
office — How  the  parcels  post  works  in  England — 
The  Postal  Savings  Bank  also  a  success — Gov- 
ernment insurance. 

V.  GLIMPSES   OF   ENGLISH  LIFE  AND  CUS- 

TOMS      47 

The  inheritance  tax — Woman  suffrage  a  live  is- 
sue— ^A  temperance  demonstration  in  Hyde  Park 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 
— What  the  licensing  bill  provides — ^A  cabman's 
argument — The  question  of  Old  Age  Pensions — 
What  education  has  done  for  Great  Britain — 
An  insidious  lowering  of  our  standards  of  liv- 
ing— "Everybody  works,  including  father" — The 
neglected  H's — Why  railway  accidents  are  fewer. 

VI.  AMONG   CASTLE   WALLS   AND   PALACES 

OLD  IN  STORY 61 

Stirling  Castle  with  its  thousand  years  of  his- 
tory— Days  of  blood  and  crime  no  less  than  of 
romance  and  chivalry — The  world  is  getting  bet- 
ter— The  majestic  figure  of  Oliver  Cromwell — ^A 
typical  letter  from  Carlyle — The  graves  of  Wes- 
ley, Watts,  and  Bunyan — Historic  places  in  Lon- 
don— Stratford,  Oxford,  and  Chester. 

VII.  "THE  PLEASANT  LAND  OF  FRANCE" 72 

Land  cultivated  a  thousand  years  and  not  "worn 
out" — Keep  some  crop  on  the  land  all  the  time — 

A  land  of  prosperous  small  farmers — Interesting 
story  of  sugar  beet  culture — How  good  roads 
help  French  industries — ^Artists  working  on  a 
canvas  of  earth  and  acres — No  lands  wasted  or 
mistreated — ^A  story  suggested  by  my  pocket- 
book — How  the  French  people  are  governed  now. 

VIIL  NAPOLEON'S  TOMB  AND  VERSAILLES..     83 
At  the  tomb  of  Napoleon — The  threefold  charac- 
ter of  Napoleon's  appeal  to  us — In  the  Royal 
Palace  of  Versailles — The  lesson  of  the  Ancient 
Court — The  relentless  rectitude  of  nature. 

IX.  BELGIUM,  HOLLAND,  GERMANY:   A  LAND 

WHERE  EVERYBODY  WORKS  92 

The  kingly  horses  of  Belgium  and  Holland — 
"I  haven't  seen  a  horse's  ribs  in  Europe" — The 
two  secrets  of  German  and  Dutch  prosperity — 
Without  intelligent  labor  no. nation  can  pros- 
per— Germany  and  Spain  contrasted — One  stu- 
pendous fallacy  we  must  put  forever  behind  us — 
Let's  learn  a  lesson  from  Grermany. 

X.  WISE     ECONOMIES      AMERICA      SHOULD 

LEARN  FROM  EUROPE 104 

America  wasting  opportimities  for   beauty — ^A 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 

FAOB. 

work  for  Southern  women — No  gullied  land  in 
Germany — How  the  forests  are  cared  for — Sav- 
ing a  country's  best  resources — The  Torrens 
System  a  working  success. 

XI.  SWITZERLAND— TWO      WEEKS      AMONG 

LAKES,     PEAKS,     GLACIERS,     CLOUDS, 

AND   SNOWS    114 

Majestic  Mount  Jungfrau  and  Beautiful  Lake 
Geneva — ^A  belated  process  of  creation — Switzer- 
land the  purest  Democracy  in  the  world — How 
direct  legislation  works — How  the  initiative  and 
referendum  would  help  America. 

XII.  "THE  GRANDEUR  THAT  WAS  ROME". . .  .    125 
Rome,    the    Eternal    City — The   mightiest   man 
who  ever  trod  this  earth  of  ours — The  old  mem- 
ories of   the   Forum — The    Colosseum   and   the 
martyrs — How  the  early  church  degenerated. 

XIII.  WHAT  ROME  AND  POMPEII  CAN  TEACH 
US   134 

What  made  the  Roman  great — How  respect  for 
law  brought  dominion  over  the  lawless — The 
greatest  work  of  Julius  Caesar — How  equity 
and  tolerance  promoted  Roman  supremacy — 
Good  roads  strengthened  the  empire — In  the 
buried  city  of  Pompeii — The  most  striking  les- 
son of  Pompeiian  life — The  moral  progress  of 
mankind  and  its  explanation — The  coming  mas- 
tery of  America  and  the  South's  opportunity. 

XIV.  HOW  THE  SOUTH  MAY  WIN  LEADER- 
SHIP      150 

A  glorious  sea  voyage — The  two  greatest  lessons 
Europe  teaches  us — The  spiritual  factor  in 
racial  greatness — "Knowledge  is  power,"  and  it 
is  read  of  all  men — ^America  is  too  wasteful — 
Europe  ten  times  as  thickly  settled  as  the 
South — The  bottom  facts  about  immigration — 
My  dream  of  the  South's  awakening — ^A  better 
agriculture  the  only  foundation  upon  which  we 
can  build. 


A  Southerner  in  Europe. 


I. 

Back  to  the  Old  Ancestral  Home:  A 
Foreword. 

New  York  City,  N.  Y. 

Here  I  am  in  New  York,  and  to-day  our  ship 
will  start  to  take  me  across  the  broad  Atlantic — 
morning,  noon  and  night;  morning,  noon  and 
night;  and  morning,  noon  and  night  again  and 
again  for  eight  days,  possibly  nine,  with  all  the 
speed  of  throbbing  and  powerful  engines,  riding 
on  the  billows  of  an  unfathomed  sea,  until  the 
shores  of  old  Scotland  at  last  come  into  view. 

Going  across  the  ocean  is  not  a  matter  of  much 
moment  now :  accidents  by  sea  are  probably  fewer 
in  proportion  to  traffic  involved  than  accidents 
by  land,  and  the  number  of  Southerners  who  go 
abroad  is  probably  increasing  three  times  as  rap- 
idly as  the  population. 

But  with  all  the  ease  of  ocean  travel  now,  I 
wonder  how  many  start  across  without  some 
thought  of  those  three  little  barks  that  set  out 
across  the  misty  and  mysterious  deep  from  the 
little  port  of  Palos  in  1492 — ^the  first  to  dare  the 
perils  of  the  unknown? 

Ever  since  the  dawn  of  creation,  through  ages 
8 


14  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

and  ages,  aeons  and  aeons,  the  great  Atlantic  had 
lashed  itself  with  furious  storms,  had  wearied 
itself  with  never-resting  billows — generations 
coming  and  going;  empires  rising  and  falling — 
while  no  man  took  up  its  perpetual  challenge  to 
search  out  the  borders  of  its  mighty  realm.  Cen- 
turies came  and  went,  and  yet  it  guarded  its  secret 
of  a  Newer  World;  the  Indian  on  this  side  not 
even  dreaming  that  the  sun  looked  down  on  any 
other  land,  and  the  European  held  back  by  super- 
stition and  by  dread  from  attempting  to  answer 
the  sphinx-like  riddle  of  the  mighty  waters. 

Europe  is  Not  a  Foreign  Country;  It  is  Our  Old 
Home. 

This  is  one  of  the  thoughts  that  come  to  mind 
as  we  join  in  now  with  "those  that  go  down  to 
the  sea  in  ships" :  that  it  is  only  in  the  last  half- 
hour  of  human  history,  as  it  were,  and  only  in 
the  last  minute  of  time,  comparatively  speaking, 
that  man  has  brought  the  sea  under  his  dominion, 
making  it  his  servant  to  carry  him  from  continent 
to  continent. 

Moreover,  it  is  also  only  in  the  last  half-hour 
of  human  history  that  there  have  been  any  white 
people  in  America.    Europe  isn't  really  a  foreign 


BACK  TO  THE  OLD  ANCESTRAL  HOME.  1 5 

country;  it  is  our  old  home.  This  is  the  idea  I 
should  like  especially  to  impress  upon  my  readers ; 
and  it  seems  to  me  that  in  our  educational  system 
we  make  a  mistake  in  dealing  only  with  what 
these  last  three  or  four  generations  have  done 
here  in  America  and  ignoring  the  long  and  weary 
upward  course  of  civilization  through  centuries 
of  European  history — just  as  if  a  son  inheriting 
a  princely  fortune  and  an  ancient  and  honorable 
name  should  migrate  to  a  new  country  and  yet 
fail  to  teach  his  children  anything  of  the  struggles 
by  which  his  ancestors  had  developed  their  sturdy 
virtues  or  acquired  their  broad  possessions.  Every 
liberty  of  which  we  boast,  as  Tom  Watson  points 
out  in  his  ** Story  of  France,"  was  cradled  in 
Europe;  it  was  over  there  that  martyrs  bled  for 
the  rights  that  we  enjoy  to-day,  and  that  patient 
generations  slowly  wrought  out  the  principles  of 
government  which  have  made  us  a  happy  people. 

And  the  Europeans  Are  All  Our  Kinsfolk. 

Really,  therefore,  as  I  have  indicated,  I  am 
going  back  to  our  old  home — much  as  if  the  son 
or  grandson  of  one  of  your  uncles  who  went  out 
to  California  in  the  gold-hunting  days  of  '49 
should  come  back  now  to  see  his  relatives  and 
the  ancestral  dwelling  place. 


l6  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

These  men  and  women  of  Europe  to-day  are 
all  our  kinsfolk,  even  if  we  have  let  the  relation- 
ships become  indistinct  and  uncertain.  It  was  in 
most  cases  only  some  chance,  accident  or  whim 
or,  at  most,  some  change  of  policy  in  government 
that  caused  our  ancestors  to  come  to  America; 
with  a  slightly  different  turn  of  Fortune's  wheel 
you  and  I  to-day  would  be  Europeans,  too. 

And,  even  as  it  is,  we  can  not  be  indifferent  to 
European  history,  nor  find  its  pages  meaningless 
for  our  times.  Have  you  ever  thought  of  it,  that 
your  ancestors — the  men  whose  blood  now 
courses  in  your  veins — played  some  part  in  the 
whole  mighty  drama  of  the  ages?  When  Caesar 
conquered  Gaul,  your  ancestors  and  mine,  wild, 
ferocious  men,  heard  somewhere  the  tramp  of 
the  Roman  legions.  In  the  struggle  between  the 
old  gods  of  mythology  and  the  new  and  strange 
religion  of  the  Christ  of  Galilee,  your  ancestors 
and  mine  were  ranged  on  one  side  or  the  other. 
When  the  days  of  the  martyrs  came,  it  was  our 
blood  that  ran  in  the  veins  of  those  who  suffered 
at  the  stake  or  of  those  who  applied  the  burning 
torch.  And  as  I  look  back  through  the  dim  cen- 
turies to  where  Peter  the  Hermit  stands  amid 
those  strangely  dressed  men  and  women,  preach- 


BACK  TO  THE  OI.D  ANCESTRAI.  HOME.  1 7 

ing  a  crusade  for  the  rescue  of  the  Holy  Se- 
pulchre, I  know  that  my  fathers  and  yours,  either 
as  mailed  knights  or  as  hard-featured  and  hard- 
living  peasants,  listened  to  the  orator's  fiery 
words  and  left  home  and  loved  ones  to  fight  the 
hated  Turk. 

Through  the  nightmare  of  the  Dark  Ages, 
through  the  long  years  of  feudal  authority,  in  the 
bloody  and  fruitless  wars  that  followed,  what 
part  did  these  kinsmen  and  kinswomen  of  ours 
play?  There  is  the  great  castle  with  its  towers 
and  battlements — and,  alas,  with  its  dungeons 
too !  Did  your  kinsfolk  and  mine  know  the  sun- 
nier side  of  life  in  the  days  when  knighthood  was 
in  flower,  or  did  they  know  only  the  peasant's 
bitter  toil  and  dirty  hovel,  or  perhaps  torture  and 
imprisonment  itself? 

Europe's  Larger   Perspective  Shows    That    the 
World  is  Growing  Better. 

One  thing  at  least  a  European  trip  and  a  survey 
of  European  history  should  do  for  a  man — they 
ought  forever  to  cure  him  of  pessimism  about  the 
progress  of  the  race.  The  curtain  rises  upon  a 
stage  of  barbarism  so  fierce  that  the  old  Norse 
warriors  on  their  forays  are  reported  as  finding 


l8  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

especial  delight  in  tossing  captive  infants  from 
spear's  point  to  spear's  point.  The  boasted  glories 
of  "the  age  of  chivalry"  become  but  a  mockery 
when  we  recall  that  in  its  damp  dungeons  the 
limbs  of  innocent  prisoners  often  rotted  off,  and 
that  even  the  knightly  vow  to  honor  women  ap- 
plied only  to  those  of  gentle  birth.  We  have  to 
look  back  but  a  few  centuries  to  the  time  when 
men  thought  they  did  God-service  by  burning  to 
death  all  with  whom  they  disagreed  about  re- 
ligion. 

And  even  existence  itself  in  those  days  was 
hard,  and  unlovely.  So  crude  were  the  tools  in 
use  and  so  ineffectual  the  farm  methods  that  even 
with  good  government  the  masses  would  have 
been  in  want  such  as  no  class  of  people  in  the 
South  knows  to-day :  a  thirteenth  century  writer, 
for  example,  reporting  that  the  average  harvest 
was  only  threefold  the  seed.  But  even  this 
meager  product  was  subject  to  grievous  taxes  to 
support  more  or  less  worthless  kings  and  vicious 
courts  until  just  prior  to  the  French  Revolution 
it  is  said  that  one-half  of  all  the  peasant  earned 
was  paid  to  the  government  in  actual  taxes,  and 
that  after  paying  the  additional  feudal  dues  and 


BACK  TO  THE  OLD  ANCESTRAL  HOME.  IQ 

church  tithes,  only  one-fifth  of  his  earnings  was 
left  him  for  the  support  of  himself  and  family. 

The  Truth  About  "The  Good  Old  Days." 

The  scroll  of  European  history  unrolled  before 
one,  one  looks  back,  too,  to  the  time  when  the 
lives  of  men  and  women  were  at  the  unquestioned 
disposal  of  lord  or  monarch ;  when  at  the  nod  of 
some  one  in  authority  your  ancestor  or  mine  per- 
haps was  hurried  away  to  wear  out  his  life  with 
cause  untried  in  some  loathsome  dungeon,  and 
when  men  thought  it  the  natural  thing  to  die  in 
wars  in  which  no  one  but  the  king  himself  had 
any  interest. 

Contrasting  this  picture  with  that  of  present- 
day  American  freedom,  who  can  doubt  the  great 
truth  uttered  by  Bishop  Fitzgerald,  that  "the 
movement  of  humanity  under  the  rule  of  an  all- 
wise,  all-gracious,  all-loving  God  is  forward,  not 
backward  ?" 

Two  Big  Facts  to  Keep  in  Mind. 

It  is  these  two  or  three  thoughts,  then,  that  I 
would  have  my  readers  keep  in  mind  in  connec- 
tion with  the  articles  that  I  shall  write : 

First,  that  we  are  ourselves  the  inheritors  of 
the  long  years  of  old  European  history  no  less 


20  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

than  our  kinsfolk  who  now  live  there:  just  as 
the  son  who  moves  away,  no  less  than  the  son 
who  stays  at  home,  is  the  heir  of  all  the  family 
traditions  that  preceded  his  departure. 

Second,  that  these  English  and  German  and 
Scotch  and  Dutch  and  French  are  our  kinsfolk 
left  at  the  old  home,  and  that  so  large  a  part  of 
the  real  history  of  our  race  has  been  made  within 
their  borders  that  American  history  really  deals, 
as  I  have  said,  only  with  the  last  half-hour  of 
human  progress. 


II. 

Notes  of  Passage  Across  the  Atlantic. 

On  Board  S.  S.  Cai.e:donia,  ,  Anchor  Line. 

This  is  the  second  day  of  July,  so  the  menu 
card  in  the  steamer  dining  room  tells  me,  and  so 
say  all  well-regulated  calendars,  but  it  doesn't 
seem  right  to  put  a  July  date-line  over  a  letter 
when  I  have  spent  the  morning  with  my  winter 
coat  on,  my  winter  overcoat,  and  one  blanket 
(steamer  rug)  securely  wrapped  around  me, 
while  the  only  thoroughly  warm  and  comfortable 
moments  spent  in  my  steamer  chair  to-day  were 
after  a  fellow-passenger  had  thrown  a  second 
blanket  over  me. 

It's  as  cold  here  now  as  it  is  in  the  South  in 
mid-November  with  cotton  picking  in  the  day- 
time and  'possum  hunting  at' night:  cold  enough 
for  late  muscadines  to  be  gone  and  for  persim- 
mons to  be  giving  promise  of  the  time  for  making 
'simmon  and  locust  beer  again.  I  could  hardly 
believe  before  I  left  home — not  even  when  it  was 
established  out  of  the  mouths  of  two  or  three 
witnesses — ^that  I  should  need  a  heavy  overcoat 
in  crossing  the  ocean  in  July,  but  I  find,  in  fact, 


22  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

that  the  only  thing  more  comfortable  than  one 
overcoat  would  be  two  overcoats. 

In  the  Fogs  Off  the  "Banks"  of  Newfoundland. 

It's  colder,  of  course,  the  way  we  have  come: 
the  "Northern  route,"  as  it  is  called,  landing  us 
in  Scotland.  After  leaving  New  York  we  skirt 
the  New  England  coast  and  keep  to  the  northeast 
until  we  go  through  the  "banks"  off  Newfound- 
land. This  puts  us  so  far  north  that  the  aurora 
borealis  or  "northern  lights"  are  plainly  visible, 
as  they  were  here  last  night  and  the  night  before. 

These  "banks,"  as  most  readers  know,  are  sub- 
ject to  terrible  fogs,  fogs  so  dense  that  vessels 
can  be  seen  only  a  short  distance  away,  so  that 
if  our  steamer  did  not  sound  its  fierce  and  terrible 
foghorn  every  four  or  five  minutes  for  hours  at 
a  time  sometimes,  there  would  be  serious  danger 
of  running  into  some  small  and  unsuspecting  fish- 
ing craft.  It  has  been  but  a  short  time  since 
such  an  accident  did  really  occur  here — a  great 
steamer  dashing  through  the  mist  upon  a  small 
fishing  boat,  with  the  result  that  seventeen  men 
were  knocked  into  the  water  and  drowned  before 
they  could  be  rescued. 


CROSSING  THE  ATIvANTIC.  2$ 

For  two  days  now,  however,  we  have  seen  no 
signs  of  life  apart  from  our  own  boat — not  a  fish- 
ing smack  nor  a  steamer  nor  any  living  thing  ex- 
cept one  or  two  seabirds.  So  far  as  ocular  evi- 
dence goes,  we  might  be  the  sole  and  solitary 
inhabitants  of  an  ocean-covered  planet. 

"The  Solitary  Inhabitants  of  an  Ocean-covered 
Planet/' 

And  yet  you  would  not  think  of  this  unless 
you  did  so  deliberately:  the  steamer  carries  such 
a  little  world  in  itself  that  it  seems  self-sufficient ; 
and  somehow,  too,  the  ocean  in  its  every  phase 
seems  to  breed  a  spirit  of  complacency  and  satis- 
faction such  as  the  dry  land  nowhere  knows. 
"They  that  go  down  to  the  sea  in  ships,  that  do 
business  in  great  waters" — do  they  not  seem  to 
have  in  all  cases  a  certain  calm  confidence  and  re- 
pose such  as  it  would  seem  more  natural  to  asso- 
ciate with  the  immovable  majesty  of  the  hills  and 
the  mountains? 

On  the  ocean,  too,  time  goes  by  with  noiseless 
tread.  We  have  now  been  on  board  five  days 
and  nights  and  have  done  nothing  more  exciting 
than  eat  and  sleep  (eating,  with  its  three  full  and 
regular  meals  a  day,  and  two  or  three  other  half- 


24  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

way  meals  in  the  shape  of  tea,  broth,  cakes,  sand- 
wiches, etc.,  thrown  in  for  good  measure,  is  our 
principal  occupation),  except  to  play  an  occa- 
sional game  of  quoits  or  shuffleboard,  walk  the 
deck  in  the  cool  October  breeze,  or  joke  and  prank 
with  fellow-passengers.  Still  the  time  has  passed 
all  too  quickly.  Barring  the  time  when  seasick- 
ness holds  you  in  thraldom,  you  would  like  a  voy- 
age of  a  month  instead  of  a  week ;  and  not  many 
of  our  passengers  have  been  seriously  seasick. 

The  Atlantic  and  the  Pacific  Contrasted. 

Such  is  "life  on  the  ocean  wave"  as  I  have 
found  it  thus  far,  my  previous  experience  having 
been  limited  to  occasional  trips  between  Norfolk 
and  New  York,  between  Norfolk  and  Boston,  and 
one  brief  trip  on  the  Pacific  between  Los  Angeles, 
Cal.,  and  the  ineffably  beautiful  and  romantic 
Catalina  Islands — a  place  where  one's  castles  in 
Spain  seem  to  shape  themselves  into  reality  and 
where  Tennyson's  lotus-eaters  might  well  dream 
their  lives  away.  Somehow  the  Atlantic,  blustery, 
practical^  commercial,  seems  to  partake  of  the 
nature  of  the  busy  English,  American  and  Ger- 
man peoples  found  on  its  borders,  while  the  peace- 
ful Pacific,  with  a  thousand  sleepy  and  easeful 


CROSSING  THE  ATLANTIC.  25 

islands  dotting  its  sunny  bosom,  seems  indeed  to 
typify  the  spirit  of  the  Orient  with  its  dreamy  re- 
ligions and  its  slower  and  more  easy-going 
nations. 

Thus  far  on  this  trip  we  have  not  had  a  real 
storm  such  as  the  Atlantic  in  its  more  restless 
moods  is  capable  of  bringing  to  pass,  but  we  have 
had  about  the  usual  quota  of  rough  weather :  high 
waves  last  night  and  this  morning  that  showed 
us  indeed  how  it  feels  to  be  "rocked  in  the  cradle 
of  the  deep,"  while  at  other  times  the  sea  has 
been  as  smooth  as  a  mill-pond. 

A  Prayer  for  "Our   Gracious  Sovereign,   King 
Bdward." 

There  are  yet  two  more  days  before  I  can  mail 
these  notes ;  and  before  that  time  there  will  prob- 
ably be  others  that  I  shall  wish  to  add — some, 
for  example,  about  my  fellow-passengers,  repre- 
senting all  parts  of  the  United  States  and  the 
uttermost  parts  of  the  earth,  as  far  at  least  as 
Lucknow,  India.  A  number  of  Scotch  people  are 
on  board,  and  my  first  definite  and  clear-cut  im- 
pression of  having  really  left  my  home  country 
came  last  Sunday  when,  in  the  Episcopal  ser- 
vice in  the  music-room,  prayer  was  made  not 


26  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

only  for  the  President  of  the  United  States,  but 
also  for  "our  gracious  sovereign,  King  Edward, 
Her  Majesty  Queen  Alexandra,"  and  for  the 
Prince  of  Wales  and  the  nobility  of  Great  Britain. 


III. 

England  and  Scotland:    A  Fair  Land  Let 
Down  Out  of  Heaven. 

Liverpool,  England. 
I  had  intended  writing  more  of  my  ocean  trip, 
but  that  is  ancient  history  now,  and  too  many 
other  beautiful  and  wonderful  things  have 
crowded  upon  my  sight  for  me  even  to  revive 
memories  of  that  rarely  beautiful  night  when  the 
silvery  crescent  of  the  new  moon  in  the  clear 
sky  above  them  glorified  and  seemingly  enchanted 
the  long  and  fancifully  shaped  cloud-lines  ranged 
above  the  ocean's  far  horizon.  Old  castles 
seemed  to  be  there  with  marvelous  towers  and 
battlements ;  mountain  peaks  and  cathedral  spires, 
too,  while  the  beauty  of  the  northern  lights  added 
a  singular  glory  to  the  outlying  edge  of  the  great 
cloud-masses.  But  this  was  seeing  in  imagination 
only  what  I  have  since  seen  in  reality,  some  im- 
pressions of  which  it  is  now  my  purpose  to  record. 

The  Spirit  of  the  Writer's  Letters. 

And  in  the  very  beginning  of  these  letters,  let 
me  ask  the  reader's  pardon  if  what  I  write  shall 
seem  somewhat  disjointed  and  unsymmetrical.  A 


28  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

traveler  here  sees  so  much,  and  in  a  hurried  trip 
like  mine  has  scenery  and  history  and  art  and 
circumstance  thrust  upon  him  in  such  confusing 
variety  that  it  is  extremely  difficult  to  bring  order 
out  of  chaos,  especially  when  writing  must  be 
done  at  odd  moments  and  under  untoward  sur- 
roundings. Will  my  readers  pardon  me,  there- 
fore, if  I  attempt  nothing  more  ambitious  than  a 
series  of  gossipy  friendship  letters  about  the 
things  I  see  that  interest  me  and  that  I  think  will 
interest  them  ?  And  with  this  understanding  I  am 
ready  to  set  out  with  my  impressions  of  the  Old 
World. 

'%and  of  Brown  Heath  and  Shaggy  Wood." 

Scotland,  I  shall  not  forget,  was  the  first  Euro- 
pean country  to  greet  my  eye ;  nor  can  I  believe 
that  I  shall  find  one  of  which  I  shall  carry  away 
a  finer  impression.  It  is  no  wonder  that  the 
Scotchman  loves  his  country;  no  wonder  that  it 
was  from  Scotland  that  the  lines  came : 

Breathes  there  a  man  with  soul  so  dead 
Who  never  to  himself  hath  said, 
This  is  my  own,  my  native  land? 

With  its  beautiful  mountains,  lakes,  meadows, 
and  rocky    shore-line,    it  makes  in    its    natural 


BKAUTIFUI.  ENGLAND  AND  SCOTLAND.         29 

r     ■  5^  % 
scenery  alone  an  irresistible  appeal  to  our  fancy 

and  to  our  admiration;  but  far  more  effective  is 
its  claim  upon  our  love  and  our  interest  when  we 
look  back  upon  the  panorama  of  its  thousand 
mighty  years  of  history  until  now  every  tongue 
and  land  has  been  enriched  by  stories  of  Scottish 
romance  and  Scottish  adventure. 

I  can  hardly  do  better  perhaps  than  to  outline 
briefly  the  course  of  my  travels  up  to  this  hour 
and  then  follow  it  up  later  with  such  comment 
as  I  may  wish  to  make.  On  Sunday  then,  let  me 
say,  we  landed  in  Glasgow ;  Monday  we  went  to 
Ayr,  the  home  of  Robert  Bums;  Tuesday  we 
went  through  the  Trossachs  country  made  famous 
in  the  novels  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  traveling  partly 
by  coach  and  partly  by  rail,  ending  the  day  with 
a  visit  to  Stirling  Castle ;  Wednesday  we  spent  in 
Edinburgh ;  Thursday  we  visited  Melrose  Abbey, 
Abbottsford  (the  home  of  Sir  Walter  Scott),  and 
went  thence  by  rail  to  Wordsworth's  lake  coun- 
try, a  memorable  seventeen-mile  coaching  trip 
from  Keswick  to  Ambleside  bringing  us  in  late 
afternoon  to  our  boat  on  Windermere;  by  its 
waters  we  spent  last  night,  and  this  late  Friday 
evening  finds  me  writing  this  letter  from  Liver- 
pool, England. 


30  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

The  very  first  and  the  most  vivid  impression 
made  upon  the  traveler  here,  I  believe,  is  that  of 
the  beauty  of  the  country,  the  rural  districts. 
Towns  here  look  much  like  those  in  America — a 
little  older,  streets  a  little  more  crooked,  more 
old  buildings  rich  in  historic  associations.  But 
between  the  country  here  and  the  country  in 
America  the  difference  is  much  more  marked.  I 
remember  that  Mr.  C.  S.  Wooten  said  to  me  last 
winter,  speaking  of  his  trip  abroad  last  summer : 
"England  looks  like  a  country  just  let  down  from 
Paradise.  I  didn't  see  a  weed  nor  a  gully  nor  a 
poor  horse,  sheep  or  cow  in  the  whole  country." 
And  I  am  now  prepared  to  vouch  for  his  state- 
ment. True,  I  have  seen  a  few  weeds  and  one  or 
two  gullies,  but  in  all  my  travel  in  Scotland  and 
England  thus  far  I  have  not  seen  more  weeds  or 
gullies  than  I  have  sometimes  seen  in  a  single 
ten-acre  lot  in  America. 

Scotland  vs.  Virginia. 

A  Virginia  girl  who  stood  beside  me  as  the 
stone-fenced  farm  plats  on  the  Scottish  coast  came 
into  view,  exclaimed  at  the  beauty  of  the  scene. 

"Oh,"  I  replied,  "Virginia  will  look  that  way  a 
hundred  or  two  years  from  now  when  population 
becomes  dense  and  farming  good." 


BEAUTrFUL  ENGLAND  AND  SCOTLAND.         3 1 

But  her  reply  is  worth  recording  and  worthy 
of  serious  thought : 

**The  trouble  is  that  we  are  wearing  out  the 
land  and  letting  it  wash  away  long  before  ever 
the  dense  population  comes." 

A  Glimpse  of  English  Farming. 

Here  in  England  it  is  very  different.     Every 
foot  of  land  seems  to  have  attention,  intelligent 
attention,  the  fields  being  as  carefully  tended  as 
our  gardens,  while  the  Scotch  and  English  gar- 
dens themselves  are  models  of  beauty  and  excel- 
lence such  as  Americans  do  not  even  dream  of. 
The  fences  enclosing  the  farms  are  nearly  all  of 
stone,  or  else  hedges ;  stone  walls  line  every  road ; 
railway  tracks  are  bordered  with  shrubbery;  the 
public  highways  are  all  of  macadam  and  kept  in 
constant'  repair,  while  the  meanest  houses  are  so 
neat  and  so  beautified  by  lawn,  hedge,  shrub  and 
flower  that  you  can  hardly  think  of  the  inmates 
as  being  poor  at  all.     A  frame  house  is  almost 
never  seen.    The  stone  fences  cross  hill,  meadow, 
and  even  climb    the  mountainsides,  and    add  a 
touch  of  picturesqueness  to  the  landscape  which 
nothing  else  could  quite  replace.     Every  home, 
too,  has  a  wealth  of  beautiful  flowers,  and  vege- 


32  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

tables  are  cultivated  much  more  extensively  and 
in  much  greater  variety  than  with  us. 

If  I  could  choose  but  one  of  England's  points 
of  superiority  as  a  gift  for  my  own  country,  how- 
ever, I  believe  I  should  take  her  good  roads. 
With  such  beautiful  highways,  innumerable  other 
good  things  would  be  added  to  us.  No  one 
could  ever  think  of  putting  up  a  ramshackle  cabin 
alongside  such  roads,  and  in  a  thousand  ways 
they  would  stimulate  and  hasten  the  development 
of  our  people  and  of  our  resources. 

Among  the  Haunts  of  Robbie  Burns. 

I  shall  never  forget  how  through  the  fog  the 
rocky  coast  of  Scotland  gradually  came  into  view 
last  Sunday  morning,  and  how  I  thought,  "For 
the  first  time  in  my  life  I  gaze  upon  land  which 
white  men  knew  five  hundred  years  ago!"  Nor 
can  I  ever  forget  my  first  set  trip  into  Scottish 
territory,  this  being  my  visit  to  Ayr,  the  birth- 
place of  the  poet  Bums,  on  Monday  last.  Leaving 
out  of  consideration  its  usual  Scotch  neatness 
and  cleanliness,  I  doubt  whether  any  reader  of 
mine  now  lives  in  a  humbler  home  than  that  in 
which  the  immortal  Scotch  poet  first  saw  the 
light  of  day.    A  low-roofed  stone  house  thatched 


BEAUTIFUL  KNGI.AND  AND  SCOTI.AND.         33 

with  straw,  you  enter  one  room  and  pass  into  the 
next,  finding  it  divided  into  stalls  for  the  cattle 
and  sheep;  then  the  two  adjoining  rooms — on 
the  same  ground  floor — were  those  of  the  Bums 
family. 

"  'Tis  but  a  cot  roofed  in  with  straw, 

A  hovel  made  of  clay, 
One  door  shuts  out  the  sun  and  storm. 

One  window  greets  the  day; 
And  yet  I  stand  within  this  room, 

And  hold  all  thrones  in  scorn 
For  here  beneath  this  lowly  thatch 

Love's  sweetest  bard  was  born." 

We  rambled  by  "the  banks  and  braes  of  bon- 
nie  Doon,"  we  crossed  the  "auld  brig,"  and  we 
followed  the  line  of  Tam  O'Shanter's  famous 
ride,  looking  into  the  broken  walls  of  Alloway 
Kirk  where  he  saw  the  ghostly  dance.  The  "auld 
Kirk"  dates  back  to  the  year  1145,  and  the  bell 
which,  still  unbroken,  surmounts  its  crumbling 
walls  had  stood  the  storms  of  nearly  four  hundred 
winters. 

Environment  of  Scott,  Burns  and  Wordsivorth. 

It  may  not  be  unwise  just  at  this  point  to  an- 
ticipate my  narrative  just  a  little  and  comment 
on  the  homes  of  two    other  poets — Scott    and 


34  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

Wordsworth — which  I  have  seen  since  visiting 
Ayr.  Scott's  beautiful  and  even  lordly  home  at 
Abbottsford,  overlooking  the  Tweed,  is  a  treasure- 
house  of  Scottish  historical  relics:  coats-of- 
arms,  swords,  suits  of  armor,  blunderbusses,  etc., 
etc.  About  Wordsworth's  country  I  shall  always 
remember  most  vividly  how  the  clouds  wrapped 
its  low  mountain  peaks  in  mist,  and  how  more 
nearly  than  anywhere  else  I  have  observed  (ex- 
cept in  our  very  highest  American  mountains) 
heaven  and  earth  seemed  there  to  meet. 

Having  seen  the  rustic  and  lowly  home  of 
Burns,  I  shall  always  better  understand  how  the 
inspired  Scottish  ploughman  sang  songs  with  the 
smell  of  the  soil  about  them ;  having  seen  Scott's 
home  and  its  numberless  illustrations  of  his  tire- 
less energy  in  collecting  Scotch  historical  relics, 
I  shall  always  think  of  it  in  connection  with  his 
great  works  of  fiction;  while  I  must  think  that 
a  man  bom  in  Wordsworth's  country,  as  I  have 
seen  it,  is  predestined  to  be  an  intense  lover  of 
nature.  I  am  especially  glad  that  at  sunset  last 
night  I  saw  the  ever  low-lying  clouds  envelop  the 
summit  of  one  of  the  mountains  on  which  Words- 


BEAUTIFUL  ENGLAND  AND  SCOTLAND.  35 

worth  loved  to  gaze;  and  after  such  a  scene  I 
shall  always  find  greater  pleasure  in  his  lines : 

"Our  birth  is  but  a  sleep  and  a  forgetting: 
The  Soul  that  rises  with  us,  our  life's  Star, 
Hath  had  elsewhere  its  setting, 

And  cometh  from  afar: 
Not  in  entire  forgetfulness, 
And  not  in  utter   nakedness. 
But  trailing  clouds  of  glory  do  we  come 
From  God,  who  is  our  home." 

It  is  easy  about  Windermere  to  "look  up 
through  Nature  to  Nature's  God,"  and  the  "trail- 
ing clouds  of  glory"  never  seem  to  be  very  far 
away. 


IV. 
England's  Cities,  People,  and  Postal  System. 

Che;ster,  EngIvAnd. 

I  wrote  last  in  Liverpool,  and  before  going 
further  it  may  be  well  to  say  a  word  about  that 
famous  English  city.  It  is  of  most  interest  to 
Southerners  because  of  its  relation  to  our  cotton 
industry,  and  it  was  fitting  therefore  that  of  all 
places  in  it  we  should  first  visit  the  Cotton  Ex- 
change. 

We  found  it,  upon  the  occasion  of  our  visit, 
somewhat  less  tumultuous  than  we  have  usually 
found  the  New  York  Cotton  Exchange,  but  at 
times  the  English  bidding  grew  quite  exciting. 
January  and  February  futures  were  selling  at 
fractions  above  "fivepence"  (ten  cents)  when  we 
were  in  Liverpool,  and  cables  from  New  York 
evidently  had  an  important  bearing  upon  prices 
offered. 

A  Vivid  Impression  of  Differences  in  Time. 

It  is  of  interest  to  record,  by  the  way,  that 
though  we  were  at  the  Liverpool  Exchange  well 
in  the  afternoon,  it  was  at  that  time  so  early  in 
the  day  in  New  York  that  New  York  cables  were 


ENGLISH    CITIES,   PEOPLE,  ETC.  Z7 

just  beginning  to  come  in,  while  it  was  still  later 
in  the  afternoon  that  cablegrams  from  Niew  Or- 
leans, still  further  west  than  New  York,  began 
to  come  in.  One  section  of  the  Liverpool  Ex- 
change is  devoted  to  trading  in  Egyptian  cotton, 
cablegrams  from  Alexandria,  Egypt,  keeping 
English  buyers  informed  as  to  the  course  of 
prices  in  the  African  market.  Of  course,  this  in- 
terest here,  however,  is  only  a  side  line,  as  it  were, 
to  the  dominant  interest  in  the  American  staple, 
and  even  a  rumor  of  "hot  winds  in  Texas,"  such 
as  was  exciting  the  Liverpool  Exchange  on  the 
day  of  our  visit,  has  its  effect  on  the  market. 

Cotton  ''the  Most  Barborously  Handled   Com- 
mercial Product  in  the  World." 

We  were  also  interested  in  seeing  the  condition 
in  which  American  cotton  arrives  in  Liverpool, 
and  no  one  who  once  sees  the  plight  in  which  the 
great  Southern  farm  product  reaches  the  English 
spinner  can  fail  to  ag^ee  with  Edward  Atkinson 
in  pronouncing  cotton  "the  most  barbarously 
handled  commercial  product  in  the  world."  Not 
only  do  the  bales  look  ragged,  dirty,  beggarlike, 
and  generally  disreputable,  but  the  actual  loss 
and  waste  in  handling  is  nothing  less  than  enor- 


38  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

mous  and  a  serious  reflection  upon  the  sound 
sense  and  business  ability  of  Southern  planters. 
A  glance  at  a  wagon-load  of  American  cotton 
as  it  is  hauled  down  an  English  street  is  enough 
to  make  any  Southerner  an  advocate  of  better 
bahng  methods.  Cotton  from  India  or  Egypt  ar- 
rives in  immeasurably  better  condition,  and  I  am 
told  that,  other  things  being  equal,  manufactur- 
ers here  prefer  the  foreign  cotton  for  this  reason. 

Liverpool  and  the  Slave  Trade. 

Liverpool  is  also  of  peculiar  interest  to  South- 
erners because  it  was  long  a  center  of  the  slave- 
trading  industry.  England  did  not  finally  pro- 
hibit the  slave  trade  until  1807  (America  in  1789 
had  fixed  the  year  1808  as  the  time  when  the 
nefarious  traffic  should  end  with  us),  and  even  in 
1807  the  Liverpool  merchants  protested  hardly 
less  vigorously  than  they  had  done  a  generation 
before  against  this  interference  with  their  "com- 
mercial rights."  It  was  England,  as  John  Richard 
Green  points  out,  that  introduced  slavery  into 
the  West  Indies  and  America — a  Pandora's  box 
of  unnumbered  evils  from  which  even  Hope 
itself  sometimes  seems  to  have  been  excluded. 
Let  it  also  be  mentioned  in  this  connection  that 


ENGUSH    CITIES,   PEOPLE,  ETC.  39 

when  England  came  to  the  abolition  of  slavery  in 
her  West  India  colonies  in  the  30's,  she  paid  the 
owners  for  their  loss.  Would  God  that  North 
and  South  in  America  had  been  wise  enough  (as 
Lincoln  wished)  to  settle  their  slavery  trouble  in 
the  same  way! 

How  Internal  Improvements  Saved  Glasgow. 

Somewhat  larger  than  Liverpool  is  Glasgow, 
Scotland,  where  we  first  landed,  but  of  which  I 
have  said  but  little  until  now.  Glasgow  is  a  fine 
illustration  of  the  fact  that  the  prosperity  of  a 
town  depends  not  so  much  upon  its  natural  re- 
sources as  upon  the  progressiveness  of  its  people. 
Fifty  years  ago  the  Clyde  River  at  Glasgow  was 
only  180  feet  wide  and  three  feet  deep.  By 
spending  $35,000,000  in  deepening  and  broaden- 
ing it  (it  is  now  500  feet  wide)  Glasgow  has  put 
itself  in  the  forefront  of  European  seaports  and 
has  made  itself  the  greatest  British  city  except 
London. 

Our  Southern  folk  would  do  well  to  take  the 
example  of  Glasgow  to  heart  and  redouble  their 
energies  in  behalf  of  all  well-conceived  plans  for 
inland  waterways  and  other  internal  improve- 
ments. 


40  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

There  is  one  thing  about   these  Scotch    and 
English  towns  that  can  not  fail  to  impress  itself 
upon  any  thoughtful  visitor,  and  that  is  the  sim- 
ilarity of  the  surnames  to  those  common  through- 
out our  Southern  country.     It  is  the  most  strik- 
ing illustration  I  have  yet  found   of  the  oft-re- 
peated statement  that  the  South  is  now  the  most 
thoroughly  Anglo-Saxon  part  of  America.    Walk 
down  any  business  street  in  Glasgow,  Edinburgh, 
Liverpool,  Chester  or  any  other  English  or  Scotch 
town  that  I  have  seen,  and  on  the  sig^s  you  will 
see  in  most  cases  names  so  common  in  your  own 
town  or  county  that  you  can  hardly  believe  your- 
self in  a  foreign  country,   while  the  surnames 
you  would  find  displayed  in  a  business  street  in 
Boston  or  New  York  are  strangely  foreign  and 
unfamiliar  to  a  Southern  traveler.    I  venture  the 
prediction  that  any  Southerner  can  walk  down 
the  main  streets  of  Glasgow  or  Liverpool  and  find 
five  times  as  many  familiar  names  as  he  would 
find  in  a  similar  area  on  Broadway,  New  York. 

And  it's  a  good  stock  of  folk  with  which  to 
claim  kin — these  English  and  Scotch.  It's  very 
foolish  and  very  harmful  for  jingoes  to  try  to  stir 
up  bad  feeling  between  England  and  America. 
We  belong  to  the  same  great  family,  our  ideals 


BNGLISH    CITIES,  PBOPLB,  ETC.  4I 

are  mainly  the  same,  and  the  two  nations  should 
work  together  in  furthering  those  ideals  through- 
out the  wide  world. 

English  Royalty   a   Lifeless,    Make-Believe 
Formalism. 

Too  many  of  our  people  are  given  to  saying 
that  England  is  a  kingdom  and  the  United  States 
a  republic;  therefore  to  praise  England's  system 
of  government  is  political  heresy.  The  truth  is, 
that  the  English  system  is,  in  many  respects, 
more  democratic  than  the  American,  royalty  here 
being  nothing  more  nor  less  than  an  emasculated 
and  perfectly  harmless  piece  of  "make-believe" 
formalism  which  the  people,  amusing  themselves, 
have  chosen  to  perpetuate  since  it  does  no  harm 
and  costs  no  great  deal  to  maintain.  Not  only 
is  it  true  that  the  "King's  speech,"  which  comes 
nominally  from  him  at  the  opening  of  each  Par- 
liament, is  written  for  him  by  the  popular  min- 
istry and  the  King  himself  can  not  change  a  word 
in  it,  but  the  people  even  show  a  disposition  to 
have  their  own  way  about  the  social  affairs  of 
royalty — the  only  remaining  phase  of  English  life 
in  which  the  King  is  really  King  at  all. 

It  was  only  last  week  that  an  incident  happened 


42  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

vividly  illustrating  this  fact.  The  Labor  and 
Socialist  Party  has  been  gaining  strength  rapidly 
here  in  recent  years,  and  now  has  thirty  members 
in  Parliament.  Well,  one  of  these  thirty  had  at- 
tacked King  Edward  so  bitterly  that  when  the 
King  gave  a  reception  to  the  House  of  Commons 
a  few  days  ago  this  Socialist  member  was  not 
invited,  and  the  upshot  is  that  the  English  press 
and  people  criticise  the  King  so  vigorously  that 
the  discrimination  is  not  likely  to  be  repeated. 
My  recollection  is,  that  President  Roosevelt,  of 
our  country,  some  time  ago  refused  to  invite 
Senator  Tillman  to  a  similar  function  without  ex- 
citing half  so  much  ado. 

Nearly  as  Many  Voters  as  in  America. 

There  are  also  practically  as  many  voters  in 
proportion  to  population  here  in  England  as  in 
America:  here  one  inhabitant  in  every  six  is  a 
voter  and  in  America  one  in  every  five.  More 
than  this,  England  has  the  Australian  ballot  sys- 
tem, as  every  American  State  should  have,  both 
in  primary  and  in  regular  elections  (with  special 
provision  for  illiterates)  ;  and  bribery  in  elections, 
direct  or  indirect,  is  checked  by  well-conceived 
legislation. 

America  might  also  well   take   lessons   from 


ENGI^ISH    CITIES,   PEOPLE,  ETC.  43 

England  in  the  matter  of  civil  service  reform  and 
municipal  government.  Public  ownership  of 
street  railways,  waterworks,  etc.,  is  common  in 
the  cities,  and,  while  I  do  not  know  about  water 
rates,  I  do  know  that  street  car  fares  are  only 
about  half  as  much  as  in  America. 

Efficiency  of  the  English  Post-OMce. 

Especially  useful  to  the  English  people  is  the 
post-office,  which  has  here  reached  a  degree  of 
efficiency  in  public  service  in  comparison  with 
which  our  American  post-office  system  shows  to 
decidedly  poor  advantage.  But  as  we  came  abroad 
ten  years  ago  (at  Tom  Watson's  suggestion)  and 
grafted  the  European  idea  of  rural  mail  delivery 
upon  our  post-office  system,  perhaps  we  shall 
some  time  force  Congress  into  giving  us  the  par- 
cels post  and  postal  savings  bank  also.  Going 
down  the  street  in  Windermere  Friday  morning, 
I  was  struck  by  the  sign : 


POST-OFFICE  FOR  MONEY  ORDERS,  SAVINGS 

BANK,   PARCELS  POST, 

TELEGRAMS, 

IN- 

SURANCE,     ANNUITY, 

INTERNAL 

AND 

REVENUE  STAMPS. 

Nor  does  this  sign    exaggerate    the    business 
done  by  any  common  English  post-offi'ce.     The 


44  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

government  owns  the  telegraph  here  and  the  rate 
is  one  cent  a  word,  with  a  minimum  charge  of 
twelve  cents,  the  telegraph  offices  being  run  in 
connection  with  the  post-offices.  On  press  tele- 
grams the  rate  is  only  one-fourth  cent  a  word, 
and  provision  is  made  that  rural  mail  carriers 
shall  handle  all  prepaid  telegrams  left  in  mail 
boxes.  Over  the  telephone  business  the  govern- 
ment also  exercises  supervision  and  "constructs 
private  telegraph  and  telephone  lines  on  rental 
terms,"  as  the  official  announcement  explains. 

How  the  Parcels  Post  Works  in  Bn gland. 

The  parcels  post  and  the  postal  savings  bank 
especially  interest  me,  as  I  believe  we  should  lose 
no  time  in  adopting  these  invaluable  improve- 
ments in  America.  Any  package  not  over  eleven 
pounds  in  weight,  or  three  feet  six  inches  in 
length,  may  be  taken  to  a  post-office  here  and 
sent  by  parcels  post  to  any  part  of  Great  Britain 
upon  these  charges: 

One  pound  or  less,  6  cents. 
Between  1  and  2  pounds,  8  cents. 
Between  2  and  3  pounds,  10  cents. 
Between  5  and  7  pounds,  14  cents. 
Between  7  and  8  pounds,  16  cents. 
Between  8  and  9  pounds,  18  cents. 
Between  9  and  10  pounds,  20  cents. 
Between  10  and  11  pounds,  22  cents. 


ENGLISH    CITIES,   PEOPLE,  ETC.  45 

An  examination  of  the  official  rates  would  in- 
dicate, too,  that  not  only  may  parcels  be  sent 
within  Great  Britain  at  these  rates,  but  packages 
may  be  sent  from  here  to  almost  any  part  of  the 
habitable  world  as  cheaply  as  they  may  be  sent 
from  one  county  seat  to  the  next  in  America. 
And  yet  our  American  Congress,  session  after 
session,  has  refused  to  heed  the  growing  popular 
demand  for  the  parcels  post  service. 

John  Wanamaker,  when  Postmaster-General, 
wisely  declared  that  the  two  greatest  reasons  why 
we  have  no  parcels  post  are :  ( i )  the  Adams  Ex- 
press Company,  and  (2)  the  American  Express 
Company.  Some  time,  however,  the  people  are 
going  to  bring  such  pressure  to  bear  upon  our 
Solons  at  Washington  that  these  giant  corpora- 
tions will  no  longer  be  allowed  to  stand  in  the 
way  of  the  needs  of  the  people  in  this  matter ;  and 
our  farmers,  by  vigorous  action,  may  do  much  to 
speed  the  day. 

The  Postal  Savings  Bank  and  Government 
Insurance. 

Of  no  less  value  is  the  Postal  Savings  Bank  and 
its  allied  features.  Anybody  (even  children  over 
seven  years  of  age)  can  go  to  any  post-office  here 


46  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

and  open  up  a  savings  account,  depositing  twenty- 
five  cents  or  more  at  the  time,  21-2  per  cent  in- 
terest a  year  being  allowed  on  all  deposits,  and 
the  government  of  Great  Britain  guaranteeing 
the  safety  of  the  funds.  Deposits  may  be  made  or 
withdrawn  at  any  post-office,  no  matter  where 
you  are,  if  you  have  your  deposit  book  with  you. 
No  one  may  deposit  more  than  $1,000  in  this  way, 
but,  after  the  $1,000  mark  is  passed,  the  de- 
positor may  invest  in  interest-bearing  govern- 
ment stock. 

At  each  post-office,  too,  the  government  calls 
attention  to  its  life  insurance  provisions,  which 
are  virtually  a  feature  of  the  postal  savings  bank 
department.  You  may  take  out  insurance  that 
will  (i)  pay  you  so  much  a  year  until  death,  or 
(2)  after  ten  years,  or  (3)  after  twenty  years 
from  beginning,  or  (4)  at  the  ages  of  55,  60  or 
65,  or  (5)  at  death. 


V. 

Glimpses  of  English  Life  and  Customs. 

London,  England. 

My  last  letter,  I  believe,  ended  with  some  com- 
ment upon  the  government  of  England.  One 
thing  that  interests  foreigners  in  this  connection 
is  how  the  government  maintains  itself  in  a  free 
trade  country  without  imposing  excessive  prop- 
erty taxes. 

Be  it  remembered,  then,  that  England  is  not 
without  tariff  taxes,  but  there  are  few  of  these, 
and  nearly  all  these  few  are  levied  on  luxuries  or 
semi-luxuries.  Remembering  how  notable  a  part 
the  tea  tax  played  in  our  early  Revolutionary  his- 
tory in  America,  it  is  of  interest  to  see  that  within 
her  own  borders  England  has  maintained  this 
heavy  tariff  until  now  the  government  collects 
$zLO,ooo,ooo  to  $50,000,000  a  year  from  this 
source  alone,  and  nearly  $75,000,000  a  year  from 
the  tariff  on  tobacco  and  snuff.  The  excise  or 
whiskey  taxes  bring  in  $150,000,000  a  year  more, 
and  there  are  also  special  income  and  inheritance 
taxes,  and  taxes  upon  the  gross  earnings  of  rail- 
ways, except  where  the  rate  is  less  than  two  cents 
a  mile. 


4S  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

The  inheritance  tax,  it  will  be  recalled,  is  one 
which  President  Roosevelt  has  recently  com- 
mended to  the  attention  of  Americans,  Over  here 
an  estate  exceeding  $500  in  value  pays  a  govern- 
ment tax  of  I  per  cent ;  $2,500,  2  per  cent ;  $5,000, 
3  per  cent ;  $50,000,  4  per  cent ;  and  so  on  up  to 
$500,000,  which  pays  6  per  cent,  and  $5,000,000, 
which  pays  8  per  cent.  There  are  also  special 
graduated  taxes  in  case  property  goes  to  persons 
not  near  of  kin,  amounting  to  10  per  cent  where 
the  property  goes  to  persons  very  far  removed  in 
kinship,  or  not  of  blood  relationship  at  all.  There 
are  also  special  stamp  taxes  of  many  kinds,  and 
special  Boer  War  taxes  now  (similar  to  our 
Spanish-American  War  taxes)  which  require 
stamps  on  checks  and  upon  all  receipted  bills. 

Woman  Suffrage  a  Live  Issue. 

There  is  a  considerable  party  here  which  favors 
the  establishment  of  a  protective  tariff,  this  senti- 
ment gaining  strength,  in  part,  from  the  unfair 
methods  of  American  monopolies  competing  for 
British  trade.  Socialism  has  also  been  making 
marked  growth  among  the  working  classes  for  a 
number  of  years  past. 

Just  at  this  writing,  however,  the  livest  political 


KNGUSH  UFB  AND  CUSTOMS.  49 

issue  is  woman  suffrage.  For  a  long  time  the 
women  of  England  who  are  taxpayers  have  had 
the  privilege  of  voting  for  city  and  county  offi- 
cers, and  they  are  now  fighting  earnestly  for  the 
privilege  of  voting  for  members  of  Parliament. 
In  a  number  of  cases  the  woman  suffrage  advo- 
cates have  grown  so  riotous  in  their  meetings  as 
to  make  it  necessary  for  the  police  to  interfere. 
When  indicted,  however,  the  women  agitators  re- 
fuse to  pay  the  fines  imposed,  going  to  jail  in- 
stead, and  then  they  make  a  great  ado  about 
being  "martyrs"  to  the  cause  of  equal  suffrage. 

If  the  woman  suffrage  idea  prevail,  the  privi- 
lege of  voting  will  be  given,  of  course,  only  to 
women  who  are  taxpayers  ("ratepayers"  they 
are  called  here)  or  householders  (that  is,  widows 
or  others  who  are  heads  of  houses). 

A  Temperance  Demonstration  in  Hyde  Park. 

Another  very  live  subject  is  the  temperance 
question,  which  reminds  me  that  the  most  power- 
ful temperance  argument  I  have  ever  witnessed 
was  in  Chester  depot  the  other  day  when  an  old 
gray-haired  woman  was  attacked  both  by  her 
husband  and  her  own  half-drunken  son.  The 
officers  interfered  and  drove  off  the  men,  while 
the  weeping  woman  sobbed  piteously  in  broken 


50  A  southe;rner  in  europe;. 

Lancashire  dialect:  "They  makes  six  pounds 
($30)  a  week,  but  never  a  farthing  (half-cent) 
do  they  give  me :  it  all  goes  for  drink,  drink." 

All  parts  of  Great  Britain  are  liquor-cursed, 
and  whiskey,  as  I  have  intimated,  is  especially 
the  bane  of  Scotland,  where  many  fear  that  it  is 
almost  hopelessly  sapping  the  strength  of  one  of 
the  finest  races  of  people  in  the  world.  But  the 
Scottish  Temperance  League  and  other  organiza- 
tions are  making  a  brave  fight  against  the  evil, 
while  here  in  London  yesterday  I  saw  a  temper- 
ance procession  "terrible  as  an  army  with  ban- 
ners," a  mile  and  a  half  long,  marching  into  Hyde 
Park  where  the  immense  audience  (made  up 
chiefly  of  working  people)  was  addressed  from 
eight  different  stands  by  a  great  variety  of  speak- 
ers. For  nearly  two  hours  the  thousands  of  spec- 
tators listened  and  cheered  and  laughed,  ending 
by  adopting  vigorous  resolutions  in  behalf  of  the 
"Licensing  Bill"  which  Parliament  is  now  begin- 
ning to  consider. 

What  the  Licensing  Bill  Provides. 

In  explanation  of  this  licensing  bill  a  word  or 
two  should  be  said.  In  England  saloons  are 
called  "public  houses,"  and  their  managers  "pub- 


ENGLISH  UFE)  AND  CUSTOMS.  5 1 

licans."  Many  years  ago  licenses  to  conduct 
these  "public  houses"  were  granted  rather  pro- 
miscuously, and  it  has  been  the  custom  of  the 
authorities  to  renew  these  licenses  from  year  to 
year  without  further  inquiry.  Now,  however,  it 
is  proposed  to  limit  the  number  of  saloons,  and 
the  provisions  of  the  licensing  bill  would,  I  be- 
lieve, decrease  the  number  in  London  by  half — 
and  half  means  many  thousand. 

The  licensing  bill  also  looks  (i)  to  the  adop- 
tion of  local  option;  (2)  to  prohibiting  the  sale 
of  liquor  to  children;  (3)  to  the  ultimate  prohib- 
iting of  women  as  bar-maids.  There  are  now 
nearly  30,000  women  employed  as  bartenders  in 
England,  and  the  most  serious  phase  of  the  liquor 
problem  is  the  growth  of  intemperance  among 
women,  especially  among  working  girls.  Drink- 
ing is  said  to  be  stationary  (or  possibly  actually 
decreasing)  among  the  masses  of  English  men, 
but  increasing  among  English  women  and  among 
the  wealthy  and  leisure  class  of  both  sexes.  A 
friend  of  mine  spoke  to  me  of  seeing  a  great 
number  of  apparently  respectable  women  drink- 
ing in  the  saloons  in  Chester  a  few  nights  ago, 
and  in  Glasgow  women  are  often  seen  reeling 
from  saloon  doors. 


52  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

It  is  high  time  for  England  to  be  doing  some- 
thing to  save  herself,  and  the  great  temperance 
prcKiession  in  Hyde  Park  yesterday  was  one  of 
the  most  encouraging  things  I  have  seen  over 
here.  I  was  also  gratified  to  find  the  recent 
record  of  the  United  States  held  up  as  an  ex- 
ample and  incentive  for  English  action.  In  all 
cases  the  arguments  for  and  against  the  licensing 
bill  are  strikingly  like  the  arguments  for  and 
against  State  prohibition  in  our  Southern  States, 
with  which  we  are  all  so  familiar.  There  is  the 
same  specious  appeal  to  **the  poor  man,"  arguing 
that  the  bill  will  leave  it  easy  for  the  rich  to  get 
liquor  but  make  it  hard  for  the  poor  man;  and 
the  same  cry  of  ''confiscation"  because  the  gov- 
ernment would  refuse  to  continue  some  licenses. 
But  a  big-bodied,  keen-witted  Irish  cabman  whom 
I  heard  address  the  Hyde  Park  meeting  yesterday 
answered  both  these  arguments,  and  made  an 
especial  appeal  to  working  men  and  women,  his 
hearers,  in  the  declaration  that  when  you  buy  a 
farm  product  30  per  cent  of  the  purchase-money 
goes  for  labor;  clothing,  25  per  cent;  iron  and 
steel  goods,  23  per  cent ;  coal,  55  per  cent ;  while 
when  whiskey  is  bought,  only  seven  per  cent  of 
the  purchase  price  goes  to  labor. 


ENGLISH  UFE  AND  CUSTOMS.  53 

To-day  the  House  of  Commons  takes  up  the 
licensing  bill,  and  thirty  days  will  be  devoted  to 
its  discussion.  The  whiskey  interests  will  make  a 
desperate  and  conscienceless  struggle,  and  already 
there  is  growing  evidence  of  the  truth  of  Lord 
Roseberry's  declaration  that  "if  the  State  does  not 
soon  control  the  whiskey  traffic,  the  whiskey 
traffic  will  control  the  State."  And  England  is 
going  to  control  the  traffic. 

The  Question  of  Old  Age  Pensions. 

Other  notable  political  measures  now  up  for 
discussion  and  action  in  England  are  the  educa- 
tion act  and  the  old  age  pension  measure.  The 
bill  for  old  age  pensions  has  already  passed  the 
House  of  Commons,  and  it  is  not  believed  that  the 
House  of  Lords  will  dare  turn  it  down.  The  bill 
in  its  present  shape  provides  that  the  government 
shall  pay  to  all  persons  over  sixty  years  of  age 
the  sum  of  five  shillings  ($1.20)  a  week,  unless 
such  persons  have  an  income  of  over  ten  shillings 
($2.40)  a  week  from  other  sources.  In  such  cases 
the  government  pension  will  be  only  enough  to 
make  a  total  of  fifteen  shillings,  or  $3.60.  The 
education  act  now  under  consideration  is  for  the 
purpose  of  relieving  the  present  discontent  among 


54  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

non-Episcopalians  who  are  protesting  from  one 

end  of  England  to  the  other  against  the  control 

of  many  of  the  public  schools  by  the  Episcopal 

clergy. 

What  Education  Has  Done  for  Great  Britain. 

And,  while  speaking  of  schools,  let  me  mention 
education  as  the  great  source  of  English  and 
Scotch  greatness.  It  has  long  been  a  saying  that 
"education  has  made  Scotland,"  and  the  support 
that  Scotch  Presbyterians  have  given  the  cause  of 
education  in  America  is  a  matter  in  which  they 
justly  take  pride. 

Even  the  cabmen  here  read  the  newspapers 
almost  as  carefully  as  business  men  in  America 
would  do.  And  I  have  been  impressed  by  the 
number  of  monuments  which  record  the  dead 
man's  services  to  public  education  as  his  strong- 
est claim  upon  the  regard  of  posterity.  Over  in 
the  old  town  of  Stirling  in  Scotland  I  recall  how 
a  tablet  in  Greyfriars  Church  records  the  fact 
that  "Alexander  Cuningham,  merchant  in  Stir- 
ling, to  extend  the  inestimable  blessings  of  edu- 
cation, bequeathed,  A.  D.  1809,  £4,000  ($20,000) 
to  be  expended  in  maintaining,  clothing  and  edu- 
cating poor  boys"  there,  while  another  memorial 
alongside  is  "to  the  memory  of  John  Allen,  writer 


ENGLISH  XI^  AND  CUSTOMS.  55 

in  Stirling,  mortgaging,  A.  D.  1735,  the  sum  of 
30,000  marks,  by  which  hundreds  of  young  men 
have  been  able  to  advance  themselves  and  to  fill 
situations  in  life  which  their  lot  seemed  to  for- 
bid." In  Liverpool,  too,  you  find  the  same  idea 
in  the  striking  monuments  to  James  Nugent, 
bearing  the  legend,  "Save  the  boy,"  while  the 
significant  inscription  on  the  monument  to  Major 
Lester  reads:  "Give  the  child  a  fair  chance." 
Democratic  England  to-day  understands  full  well 
that— 

"Princess  and  lords  may  flourish  or  may  fade: 
A  breath  can  make  them,  as  a  breath  has  made; 

But  a  bold  peasantry,  their  country's  pride, 
When  once  destroyed,  can  never  be  supplied." 

An  Insidious  Lowering    of  Our    Standards    of 
Living. 

An  intelligent  laboring  class  is  the  backbone  of 
any  country,  and  in  this  England  is  strong.  There 
are  no  negroes  here,  of  course,  the  entire  serving 
class  being  white.  And  their  neatness,  cleanli- 
ness, quickness  and  intelligence  are  some  of  the 
things  which  impress  themselves  most  deeply 
upon  the  Southern  traveler.  Nowhere  in  the 
country  districts  here  have  I  seen  the  signs  of 
shiftlessness — broken  gates,   gullied  fields,  neg- 


56  A  southe;rner  in  europe. 

lected  tools,  shackly  outhouses,  unpainted  and 
ill-kept  residences — which  mar  the  landscape  in 
so  many  country  districts  in  the  South.  A 
house  here  may  have  only  two  or  three  rooms, 
but  its  neatness  makes  it  a  joy  forever,  and  the 
fields  look  like  the  work  of  landscape  gardeners : 
all  Scotland  between  Edinburgh  and  Glasgow 
seems  to  be  almost  as  neat  as  our  capitol  squares, 
and  England  is  hardly  less  beautiful. 

I  bear  no  ill  will  toward  our  negroes,  but  it  is 
impossible  to  escape  the  conclusion  that  their  ig- 
norance and  shiftlessness  have  not  only  held  back 
the  South  in  a  thousand  ways,  but  their  careless- 
ness has  provided  a  lower  level  for  indifferent 
white  people  to  fall  to.  Nowhere  else  do  you  find 
white  people  content  to  live  in  such  ugly  homes 
and  with  such  unpromising  farms  as  often  meet 
our  vision  in  the  South,  and  I  think  it  partially 
explained  by  the  fact  that  the  negro,  taken  fresh 
from  Africa,  has  lowered  our  ideals  and  standards 
of  living  in  a  certain  insidious  fashion  from  which 
these  European  countries  have  fortunately  been 
exempt. 

"Everybody  Works,  Including  Father." 

Another  way  in  which  the  difference  between 
intel.igent  white  labor  and  shiftless  negro  labor 


ENGLISH  U^  AND  CUSTOMS.  $7 

makes  itself  felt  is  in  the  different  attitude  to- 
ward work  itself.  People  here  in  England  do  not 
seem  to  regard  any  work  that  comes  to  hand  as 
being  "beneath  them."  Over  in  Leamington  the 
other  day  the  man  who  joined  his  wife  in  waiting 
on  our  table,  and  who  brought  the  water  to  my 
room,  was  a  man  of  such  intelligence  that  I  should 
guess  him  to  be  a  minister ;  a  man  with  the  bear- 
ing of  a  gentleman  and  a  man  whose  wide  knowl- 
edge of  politics  and  history  made  it  a  pleasure  to 
talk  with  him.  It  was  much  the  same  way  in 
Glasgow,  so  that  at  sight  of  the  head  man  of  the 
house  removing  plates  from  the  table,  one  of  our 
party  well  remarked:  "In  England  everybody 
works,  including  father." 

Most  of  the  smaller  hotels  seem  to  be  run  by 
women ;  women  work  largely  in  the  fields,  and  in 
the  stores  women,  I  believe,  are  even  more 
numerous  than  in  America.  The  women  are  less 
beautiful  than  in  the  South,  but  have  fine,  rosy 
complexions  and  healthy  bodies.  The  young  girls 
seem  to  be  slower  in  "coming  out,"  wear  childish 
clothes  at  a  later  age,  and  I  have  seen  a  number 
of  girls  eighteen  or  twenty  years  old  wearing 
their  hair  in  plaits.  One  hideous  custom  among 
English  women  of  the  more  careless  sort  is  that 


58  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

of  cigarette  smoking.  Among  men  generally,  on 
the  other  hand,  I  should  say  that  there  is  not  one- 
third  so  much  smoking  as  among  American  men. 
The  "soft  drink"  habit  is  not  found  here  at  all, 
and  I  haven't  seen  a  drug  store  soda-water  foun- 
tain since  I  left  America. 

The  Neglected  H's. 

Concerning  the  speech  of  the  people,  everybody 
knows,  of  course,  of  the  Englishman's  predilection 
for  dropping  his  H's.  "It  was  'ot,  so  'ot,"  said  a 
fellow-traveler  speaking  to  me  yesterday  of  the 
weather  two  weeks  ago  (though  I  haven't  gone  a 
day  without  my  overcoat  since  I  left  America), 
and  your  coarser  Englishman  says  "  'ouse,"  not 
house,  and  "  'orse,"  not  horse.  Another  curious 
pronunciation  is  sounding  "y"  for  "a,"  as  "lydy," 
instead  of  "lady."  "The  gyte  is  right  stryte  be- 
fore you,"  said  a  man  to  me  Friday,  meaning 
"gate"  and  "straight."  But  the  people  are  all 
wonderfully  polite.  "Thank  you"  is  always  on 
the  tip  of  the  tongue,  and  I  confess  to  a  liking  for 
the  English  habit  of  saying  frankly,  "I'm  sorry," 
where  an  American  would  say,  "Beg  pardon." 

There  is  a  certain  dignity  about  even  the  signs 
in  public  places.    Thus,  you  do  not  see  at  Oxford, 


ENGLISH  LIFE  AND  CUSTOMS.  59 

"Keep  Off  the  Grass,"  but  'Tlease  Not  to  Walk 
on  the  Grass."  In  a  printed  hotel  notice  at  Lake- 
side I  read  that  "The  proprietor  respectfully  inti- 
mates that"  so  and  so  may  be  done. 

Another  matter  of  interest  to  me  has  been  the 
Scripture  motto  verses  one  so  often  finds  in  his 
bedroom,  and  the  taste  with  which  rooms  are 
decorated,  especially  notable  being  the  excellent 
taste  shown  in  the  selection  of  pictures. 

On  the  old  tombstones,  moreover,  a  curious 
custom  is  that  of  giving  the  occupation  of  the  de- 
ceased person.  Thus  in  Glasgow  you  read  of 
merchants,  sail-makers,  teachers,  etc.  In  the 
churchyard  of  Melrose  Abbey  there  are  epitaphs 
of  "tenants"  and  "gardeners,"  while  an  inscrip- 
tion I  copied  at  Ayr,  alongside  that  of  Robert 
Burns's  father,  reads  as  follows: 

"William  Croslie,  St.,  Farmer, 

Died  at  Brockloch,  2  August, 

1882,  Aged  91;   and 

Marian  Cornochan,  His  Spouse, 
Died  5   May  1870,  Aet.,  70." 

Why  Railway  Accidents  Are  Fewer. 

And  while  I  am  giving  this  running  sketch  of 
miscellaneous  matters,  I  must  not  fail  to  say  a 
word  about  the  English  railways,  which  are  in 


6o  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

many  respects  radically  different  from  those  in 
America.  For  one  thing  the  cars  are  not  open 
lengthwise,  but  on  the  side,  and  all  the  people  in 
a  car  do  not  ride  together,  but  in  compartments 
or  divisions,  each  of  which  seats  six  or  eight  per- 
sons. There  are  first,  second  and  third-class 
rates,  third-class  rates  being,  I  believe,  less  than 
two  cents  a  mile,  and  accommodations  better 
than  on  first-class  cars  in  the  Southern  States. 
The  trains  are  practically  never  behind  time. 

But  of  all  differences  in  favor  of  the  English 
system,  that  which  most  impresses  me  is  the  fact 
that  no  railroad  here  can  run  its  track  on  a  level 
across  a  public  road.  Usually  the  road  is  built 
up  on  either  side,  a  bridge  is  put  up,  and  the  rail- 
road track  runs  underneath.  This  is  one  reason, 
no  doubt,  why  accidents  are  so  much  rarer  on 
English  than  on  American  roads. 

To  the  famous  towns,  castles,  battle-fields  and 
other  historic  spots  I  have  visited  in  Scotland  and 
England  a  separate  and  special  article  must  be 
devoted,  and  these  will  be  considered  in  our  next 
letter. 


Vl. 

Among  Castle  Walls  and  Palaces  Old  in 
Story. 

London,  England. 

In  my  last  letter  I  promised  to  give  this  time 
some  impressions  of  the  historic  and  notable 
places  I  have  visited  in  Scotland  and  England. 

This,  therefore,  I  now  set  out  to  do,  beginning 
at  Stirling  (thirty-six  miles  from  Edinburgh). 
For  it  was  as  I  went  over  the  ancient  moat-bridge 
into  the  gigantic  gates  of  Stirling  Castle,  and 
thought  of  its  more  than  thousand  years  of  check- 
ered and  stirring  memories,  that  I  first  felt  the 
subtle  atmosphere  of  the  Middle  Ages  and  the 
mystic  spell  of  the  long-gone  days  of  knighthood 
and  of  chivalry. 

Stirling  Castle   With  Its    Thousand    Years    of 
History. 

Here  for  the  first  time  I  saw  a  great  mediaeval 
castle  with  its  massive  stone  walls  and  frowning 
battlements  and  towers,  standing  out  upon  its 
lofty  eminence  above  all  the  surrounding  coun- 
try :  secured  in  the  front  by  moat  and  drawbridge 
(with  a  trapdoor  at  the  entrance  on  the  titanic 
6 


62  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

outer  walls),  and  then  by  two  or  three  inner 
walls,  while  from  the  rear  a  rugged  and  pre- 
cipitous stone  ascent  of  sixty  feet  guards  the  ap- 
proach to  the  ancient  fortress. 

And  Stirling  has  a  history  worthy  of  its  lofty 
eminence  and  this  isolated  grandeur.  It  looks 
out  upon  one  of  the  most  beautiful  and  upon  one 
of  the  most  historic  views  in  all  Great  Britain. 
The  battle-field  of  Bannockburn  is  before  you 
here,  and  Stirling  Bridge  of  course,  and  yet  an- 
other battle-field — Cambuskenneth — in  which 
Scots  and  Picts  fought  each  other  six  hundred 
and  fifty  years  before  Columbus  discovered  the 
New  World. 

It  is  when  you  come  upon  facts  like  these  that 
you  begin  to  realize  that  the  annals  of  America 
indeed  deal  only  with  the  last  half-hour  of  human 
history.  This  very  Stirling  Castle,  for  example, 
was  taken  by  Edward  I  of  England  in  1304,  more 
than  three  hundred  years  before  the  first  white 
man  set  foot  upon  Jamestown  soil,  and  ten  years 
later  the  famous  Scotch  chieftain,  Bruce,  recap- 
tured it.  It  was  at  Stirling  that  Lord  Darnley 
courted  Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  and  it  was  here 
that  James  I,  who  was  King  of  England  when  the 
first  permanent  English  settlements  were  made  in 


SOME  CASTLKS  OLD  IN  STORY.        63 

America,   was   christened    and   crowned,    John 
Knox  preaching  the  coronation  sermon. 

Days  of  Blood  and  Crime  No  Less  Than  of  Ro- 
mance and  Chivalry. 

Stirling  Castle,  too,  at  the  very  first  brings  you 
face  to  face  with  the  tragedy  as  well  as  with  the 
romance  of  the  old,  old  days.  Not  only  does  the 
terrible  dungeon — its  opening  a  mere  hole  in  the 
ground  twelve  feet  down  before  you  enter  the 
dark  grim  caverns  in  which  captive  enemies  or 
suspects  went  to  the  torment  of  a  living  death — 
not  only,  I  say,  does  this  foul  dungeon  cast  a 
shadow  upon  the  rosy  pictures  we  like  to  paint  of 
"the  age  of  chivalry,"  but  Stirling  and  almost 
every  other  castle  in  Great  Britain  has  its  story 
of  crime,  involving  one  or  more  figures  well 
known  in  history. 

At  Stirling  they  still  show  you  the  room  where 
King  James  I  stabbed  and  killed  the  Earl  of 
Douglas  five  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago. 

In  Holyrood  Palace  in  Edinburgh  I  saw  the 
little  room  where  Rizzio,  secretary  to  Mary, 
Queen  of  Scots,  was  murdered  by  Darnley  and 
others — and  but  a  few  months  later  Bothwell, 
having  plotted  with  the  Queen  for  the  murder 
of  Darnley,  here  married  her  himself. 


64  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

In  Edinburgh  Castle  near  by  I  saw  the  old  ban- 
queting hall  where  in  1440  the  young  Douglasses 
were  invited  to  a  great  dinner  only  to  see  the 
black  bull's  head — the  symbol  of  death — put  be- 
fore them  on  the  banquet  table,  after  which  they 
were  dragged  away  and  beheaded.  Here,  too, 
Oliver  Cromwell  and  others  met  in  1648  and  dis- 
cussed the  necessity  for  executing  Charles  I ;  and 
Edinburgh  Castle  also  has  a  connecting  link  with 
the  murder  of  Macbeth  in  that  the  St.  Margaret's 
Chapel  here  was  built  by  the  wife  of  the  Malcolm 
of  Shakespeare's  play. 

Kenil worth  Castle,  of  which  only  picturesque 
ruins  now  remain,  of  course  calls  to  mind  the  al- 
leged murder  of  his  wife  by  Earl  Leicester  as 
told  in  Scott's  famous  novel. 

And  the  Bloody  Tower  of  London,  I  need  not 
mention,  is  famous  for  the  horrible  crimes  of 
which  it  has  been  the  scene.  At  its  very  portals 
you  pass  the  spot  where  the  young  princes  were 
smothered  by  Richard  III  four  hundred  years 
ago ;  and  among  those  who  languished  in  prison 
here  before  finding  death  from  a  headsman's  axe 
were  Anne  Boleyn,  wife  of  Henry  VIII  and 
mother  of  Elizabeth;  Lady  Jane  Grey  and  her 
husband  (beheaded  because  of  their  claims  upon 
the  throne),  and  Sir  Walter  Raleigh. 


SOME  CASTLES  OLD  IN  STORY.        65 

With  the  memory  of  these  terrible  crimes  fresh 
upon  me — committed  in  most  cases  by  Kings  and 
Queens  claiming  to  rule  "by  the  grace  of  God" — 
it  is  easy  to  see  how  far  we  have  come  from  the 
time  when  men  and  women  with  human  blood 
upon  their  hands  could  sit  undisturbed  upon  the 
world's  greatest  thrones.  And  having  also  stood 
but  a  few  days  ago  upon  the  spot  in  Oxford 
where  Cranmer,  Latimer  and  Ridley  were  burned 
at  the  stake  for  conscience'  sake  (while  remem- 
bering that  God  has  put  us  of  this  generation 
upon  a  time  when  the  whole  world  enjoys  reli- 
gious liberty),  should  I  not  be  a  blind  pessimist 
indeed  did  I  not  believe  that — 

"through  the  ages  one  increasing  purpose  runs 
And  the  thoughts  of  men  are  widened  with  the  process 
of  the  suns?" 

This  is  the  best  age  that  the  world  has  ever 
known,  and  to-morrow  will  be  better  than  to-day. 
It  is  a  good  thing  to  come  to  Europe  and  get  that 
historical  perspective  which  makes  for  faith  like 
this.  Not  only  have  public  morals  improved,  but 
life  itself  is  infinitely  richer  and  nobler  now  than 
ever  before.  The  plain  Southern  farmer  to-day 
may  live  in  greater  comfort  than  the  lords  and 


66  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

ladies  of  the  castle  in  the  so-called  "brave  days 
of  old.'' 

There  are  eddies  and  cross-currents  in  the 
stream  of  human  history,  and  sometimes  the 
"back  waters"  of  reaction  from  the  furious  main 
current;  but  always  the  dominant  movement  is 
toward  good:  of  this  we  may  be  sure.  Here  in 
the  British  Museum  a  day  or  two  ago  I  looked 
with  interest  and  with  reverence  upon  the  original 
copies  of  the  Magna  Charta,  that  great  corner 
stone  of  our  English  liberties,  and  reflected  upon 
the  long,  hard-fought,  and  yet  unretreating  strug- 
gle through  which  the  idea  of  "liberty,  equality 
and  fraternity"  has  since  fought  its  way  toward 
that  "one  far-off  divine  event  to  which  the  whole 
creation  moves." 

The  Majestic  Figure  of  Oliver  Cromwell. 

I  was  glad  to  come  to  England  as  much  as 
anything  else  for  the  privilege  of  making  pil- 
grimage to  the  shrines  of  some  of  the  men  whose 
work  in  history  or  literature  has  evoked  my  ad- 
miration. 

No  single  incident  of  the  trip  thus  far,  there- 
fore, has  pleased  me  more  than  the  special  privi- 
lege given  me  at  Warwick  Castle  of  putting  on 


SOME  CASTlvES  OLD  IN  STORY.  67 

my  head  the  helmet  of  Oliver  Cromwell;  and  in 
Westminster  Hall  it  was  Cromwell's  figure  that 
was  most  in  my  mind:  Cromwell,  with  patience 
exhausted,  coming  upon  England's  unprofitable 
servants,  who  had  dilly-dallied  so  long  about 
weighty  matters,  and  driving  the  miscalled  Par- 
liament from  its  halls.  I  can  hear  him  now,  the 
stern-visaged  and  purposeful  Puritan  and  man 
of  iron,  speaking  in  the  language  of  the  Bible 
as  he  did  at  Dunbar  and  as  he  does  in  the  letter 
from  him  which  I  saw  here  in  London  the  other 
day.  Defiantly  he  recounts  the  follies  of  the 
Parliament:  resolutely  at  last  he  drives  them  be- 
fore him.  "Your  hour  is  come,"  he  proclaims, 
"the  Lord  hath  done  with  you."  That  day  Crom- 
well was  master  of  England,  "Lord  Protector  of 
the  Commonwealth,"  ruling  with  the  power  of  a 
Caesar  even  if  without  a  Caesar's  ambition  or 
selfishness:  and  yet  it  was  but  a  few  years  later 
that  the  returning  monarchy  had  his  body  rudely 
torn  from  the  grave  and  his  head  put  upon  the 
gables  of  this  same  Westminster  Hall ! 

But  Cromwell's  story  proves  afresh  that  the 
sure  verdict  of  history  may  always  be  awaited 
with  calm  confidence — as  true  in  the  long  run  as 
that  the  polar  needle,  temporarily  disturbed  by 


68  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

some  unusual  attraction,  will  yet  inevitably  re- 
turn and  swing  true  again  to  the  unchanging 
north  star.  Nine  years  ago  a  great  assemblage 
met  here  by  Westminster  Hall  again,  and  a  life- 
size  statue  of  Cromwell  was  unveiled — the  monu- 
ment having  the  additional  distinction  of  being 
placed  within  the  enclosed  court  of  England's 
Parliament — and  a  mighty  nation  uncovered  its 
head  in  reverence  to  Cromwell's  memory. 

Shall  not  some  time  our  own  America  itself, 
grown  wiser,  pay  a  like  tribute  in  our  Capitol  at 
Washington  to  Lee  and  to  Jackson,  and  to  others 
of  like  grandeur  of  spirit  who  fought  on  the 
losing  side  in  the  other  great  civil  struggle  of  an 
English-speaking  nation  ? 

The  Graves  of  Wesley,  Watts  and  Bunyan. 

Sunday  morning  I  was  glad  to  see  John  Mil- 
ton's old  church ;  his  grave  is  in  the  chancel,  and 
this,  by  the  way,  is  the  same  church  in  which 
Oliver  Cromwell  was  married.  We  also  went 
to  the  Wesley  Chapel  where  John  Wesley,  the 
great  founder  of  Methodism,  preached  in  the 
later  years  of  his  life,  assisted  by  his  famous  poet 
brother,  Charles  Wesley,  the  author  of  so  many 
familiar  hymns.     John  Wesley  died  in  the  little 


SOME  CASTLES  OLD  IN  STORY.        69 

house  beside  the  chapel,  and  his  mother,  Susan- 
nah Wesley  (mother  of  seventeen  or  nineteen 
children,  I  have  forgotten  which  number)  is 
buried  in  the  Bunhill  burying  grounds  just  across 
the  way,  as  is  also  Isaac  Watts,  no  less  famous 
than  Charles  Wesley  as  a  hymn  writer,  John 
Bunyan,  author  of  "Pilgrim's  Progress,"  and 
Daniel  Defoe,  whose  "Robinson  Crusoe"  has 
been  the  delight  of  every  generation  of  boys  that 
has  grown  up  since  its  publication. 

Carlyle  is  another  one  of  my  heroes,  and  I  was 
glad  to  go  out  to  Chelsea  and  see  the  house  where 
he  died — just  as  I  was  glad  to  see  a  typical  letter 
of  his  regretting  his  then  seemingly  fruitless 
search  for  a  publisher  for  "Sartor  Resartus"  and 
referring  to  some  man  as  provoking  his  admira- 
tion "because  he  is  a  man,  a  real  man,  and  not 
a  mere  clothes-horse/' 

Historic  Places  in  London. 

London  is  full  of  just  such  historic  places.  Not 
far  from  St.  James's  palace  we  saw  the  house 
where  Byron  "woke  up  to  find  himself  famous" ; 
in  Chelsea  we  saw  the  homes  of  George  Eliot, 
Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti  and  the  artist  Turner; 
near  Whitehall  is  the  place  where  Charles  I  was 


70  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

beheaded;  the  house  given  to  the  Duke  of  Wel- 
lington by  the  English  people  (just  as  Ameri- 
cans gave  a  house  to  Admiral  Dewey)  is  pointed 
out;  in  the  crypt  of  St.  Paul's  are  the  tombs  of 
Wellington  and  Nelson;  and  in  Westminster 
Abbey  those  of  Chaucer,  Dickens,  Tennyson, 
Browning,  Thackeray,  William  Pitt,  William  E. 
Gladstone,  besides  numerous  English  monarchs, 
including  Queen  Elizabeth,  Queen  Mary  and  the 
royal  Edwards  and  Henrys.  In  Westminster 
Abbey  we  also  saw  the  coronation  chairs  in  which 
all  the  Kings  of  England  have  been  crowned  here 
snice  Edward  I;  and  in  the  Bloody  Tower  the 
crowns  of  the  King  and  Queen,  sparkling  masses 
of  the  costliest  jewels,  are  shown  to  the  public. 

Stratford,  Oxford  and  Chester. 

Writing  this  much,  however,  has  only  served 
to  convince  me  of  the  impossibility  of  giving 
within  the  limits  of  a  newspaper  article  any  ade- 
quate description  of  the  many  towns  and  places 
here  in  which  mighty  men  have  wrought  mighty 
deeds,  blessing  not  only  the  little  island  of  Great 
Britain,  but  the  whole  wide  world,  and  especi- 
ally the  great  English-speaking  peoples  of  the 
United  States  and  Canada. 

There  is  the  beautiful  little  town  of  Stratford- 


SOME  CASTLES  OLD  IN  STORY.  7I 

on-Avon  where  we  saw  the  humble  cottage  in 
which  Shakespeare  was  born,  and  his  burial  place 
in  the  church,  with  the  famous  epitaph,  "Curst 
be  he  that  moves  my  bones";  there  is  Oxford 
with  its  famous  University,  and  its  rich  heritage 
of  splendid  names — Blackstone,  Raleigh,  Wesley, 
Samuel  Johnson,  Wellington,  Peel,  Ruskin  and 
many  others;  there  is  Chester  with  its  famous 
Cathedral  and  its  nearly  nineteen  hundred  years 
of  known  history,  Roman  ruins  here  still  telling 
the  story  of  its  beginnings  as  a  Roman  camp 
sixty-one  years  after  the  birth  of  Christ — so  short 
a  time  after  the  crucifixion  that  an  historical 
novelist  might  imagine  as  transferred  hither 
some  of  the  very  soldiers  who  represented  the 
imperial  Caesar  upon  Golgotha's  hill.  Or  with 
the  unquestioned  historical  fact  of  Charles  I 
watching  from  Chester  walls  the  defeat  of  his 
forces  at  Marston  Moor,  the  same  novelist  might 
wonder  if  the  proud  monarch  dreamed  here  of 
the  headsman's  ax  which  was  to  be  his  end. 
My  next  letter  will  find  me  in  France. 


VII. 
"The  Pleasant  Land  of  France." 

Paris^  France. 

*'The  pleasant  land  of  France" — so  it  is  called, 
and  it  is  well  named.  It  is  indeed  a  beautiful 
country,  the  fields  tilled  like  gardens,  the  road- 
sides lined  with  beautiful  and  shapely  trees,  the 
small  areas  in  forest  given  almost  as  much  atten- 
tion as  our  cultivated  fields,  the  houses  neat  and 
well  kept,  the  fields  dotted  with  busy  and  seem- 
ingly prosperous  workers.  The  farming  districts 
are  a  delight  to  the  eye,  as  well  as  an  unending 
source  of  pleasure  to  any  one  who  delights  in  in- 
telligent and  well-directed  industry.  The  red- 
tiled  roofs  of  the  stone  and  brick  houses,  the  gold 
of  the  harvest  fields  (for  the  wheat  is  just  now 
being  harvested),  the  dark  green  of  the  growing 
crops  cultivated  alongside,  interspersed  with  slen- 
der and  stately  trees — all  this  makes  a  picture 
whose  beauty  is  entirely  unmarred  by  one  gully 
or  galled  spot  or  weedy  patch  or  shackly  cabin  or 
"turned  out"  field. 

Land  Cultivated  a    Thousand    Years  and    Not 
'Worn-out/' 

This  land  I  see  before  me  here  was  probably 
in  cultivation  for  centuries  before  the  first  white 


73 

man  alarmed  the  stolid  American  Indian  on  his 
hunting  grounds,  and  has  made  crops  ever  since — 
and  yet  no  one  thinks  of  saying  that  this  French 
soil  is  "worn-out"  or  "needs  resting."  With  in- 
telligent labor  and  prudent  handling  this  land,  a 
thousand  years  in  use,  is  still  highly  productive; 
in  our  country  unintelligent  labor  and  careless 
handling  have  ruined  wide  areas  which  have  not 
grown  crops  one-twentieth  as  long. 

And  the  main  secret?  It  is  here  before  me 
now — these  great  herds  of  grazing  cattle  in  the 
fields  alongside  the  growing  crops,  and  these 
farmers  with  three-horse  teams  preparing  the 
land  for  a  new  crop,  rolling  it  and  preparing  it 
as  thoroughly  as  an  American  would  do  for  a 
garden  in  order  that  another  crop  may  start  to 
growing  as  quickly  as  one  is  taken  off. 

I  noticed  to-day  that  where  the  wheat  has  been 
harvested  a  day  or  two  the  shocks  are  piled  to- 
gether on  narrow  strips  here  and  there  and  all 
the  land  between  is  already  broken  for  another 
planting.  The  land  is  cultivated  in  long  strips, 
and  there  is  hardly  a  foot  of  soil  wasted;  the 
wheat  strip  adjoins  squarely  the  strip  devoted  to 
sugar  beets,  potatoes,  etc.,  and  there  is  no  room 
for  a  weed  to  grow — barely  enough  for  the  horses 


74  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

to  turn  round  between  fields.  I  recall  how  the 
Italian  immigrants  in  Mississippi  follow  out  this 
same  idea,  and  how  the  neatly  hoed  ends  of  their 
cotton  rows  contrast  with  the  ragged  weed 
patches  of  the  negro's  fields.  Here  in  France  you 
see  no  clods,  no  gullies,  no  weeds,  no  poor  horses 
and  cattle,  no  scrub  hogs,  no  disgraceful  tenant 
cabins. 

A  Land  of  Prosperous  Small  Farmers. 

Hardly  anywhere  in  the  world  do  so  many 
farmers  own  their  own  farms  as  in  France — small 
farms,  to  be  sure,  but  the  intelligent  small  farmer 
here  with  five  or  ten  acres  lives  far  more  com- 
fortably than  the  Southern  farmer  owning  twenty 
times  this  area  who  depends  upon  shiftless  labor 
or  shiftless  methods  of  cultivation.  With  this 
letter  I  am  sending  an  extract  from  yesterday's 
Paris  edition  of  the  London  Mail,  telling  how 
some  French  gardeners,  taking  up  a  two-acre 
patch  of  tough  clay  in  Essex,  had  sold  ii,ooo 
(equal  to  $4,860  American  money)  worth  of 
products  up  to  July  26th,  and  expect  to  sell 
enough  more  before  the  end  of  the  year  to  bring 
the  total  to  about  £  1,600  ($8,000)  for  the  twelve 
months'  sales. 


75 

The  farms  are  so  small  here  that  it  is  expensive 
to  have  improved  machinery,  but  this  difficulty 
is  obviated  by  co-operative  buying:  five  or  six 
farmers  with  adjoining  tracts  will  purchase  a 
reaper  together,  or  a  harrow,  or  thresher.  The 
strong,  heavily  built  horses  are  a  delight  to  the 
eye,  and  some  oxen  are  also  used.  I  saw  a  reaper 
in  the  wheat  field  yesterday  drawn  by  two  yoke 
of  oxen. 

Women  work  much  in  the  fields :  I  saw  num- 
bers of  them  doing  all  sorts  of  work  yesterday: 
not  in  any  half-hearted  or  humdrum  fashion,  but 
healthy,  intelligent-looking  women  who  work 
earnestly  and  cheerily,  simply  because  on  these 
small  acres  every  one  must  work  if  the  family  is 
to  prosper,  and  because  every  member  of  the 
family  takes  pride  in  having  a  beautiful  home  and 
a  beautiful  farm,  as  fertile  and  productive  as  in- 
telligence and  skill  can  make  it. 

The  strength  of  France  is  its  millions  of  con- 
tented, prosperous,  intelligent  small  farmers  who 
own  their  own  homes,  and  who  make  the  entire 
country  a  dream  of  beauty  and  prosperous  ac- 
tivity. 

Large  areas  here  are  devoted  to  growing  the 
sugar  beet,  and  its  history  also  illustrates  the 


76  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

possibilities  of  scientific  agriculture.  Originally 
the  beet  contained  so  little  sugar  that  its  cultiva- 
tion was  barely  profitable,  but  by  long  years  of 
careful  seed  selection  and  plant  breeding,  the 
sugar  content  has  been  so  largely  increased  that 
the  industry  is  now  one  of  very  considerable 
proportions.  I  should  be  afraid  to  quote  figures 
from  memory,  but  my  impression  is  that  the 
farmers  now  get  two  or  four  times  as  much  sugar 
from  a  ton  of  beets  as  their  fathers  did  from  the 
less  highly  improved  varieties  they  grew  fifty 
years  ago. 

How  Good  Roads  Help  French  Industries. 

And  the  roads — they,  too,  add  incalculably  to 
the  beauty  of  the  country  and  to  the  pleasure  of 
country  life.  National  aid  to  road  building  and 
road  improvement,  as  has  been  much  agitated  in 
America  in  recent  years  (notably  by  Latimer,  of 
South  Carolina,  Brownlow,  of  Tennessee,  and 
Bankhead,  of  Alabama),  is  an  actual  working 
fact  here  in  France,  the  main  lines  being  built  and 
maintained  by  the  national  government,  the  mile- 
age being  23,656,  and  $300,000,000  having  been 
spent  in  this  work  to  date.  Even  the  local  roads 
are  kept  in  superb  condition,  and  some  one  re- 


cently  pointed  out  the  difference  between  French 
and  American  roads  by  showing  that  in  France 
one  horse  is  expected  to  carry  a  load  of  3,300 
pounds  twenty  miles  a  day  over  rolling  country, 
while  in  America  one  horse  would  carry  only 
1,000  to  1,400  pounds. 

Artists  Working  "On  a  Canvas  of  Barth  and 
Acres." 

And  not  only  are  the  roads  themselves  in  the 
splendid  condition  I  have  indicated,  but  every 
highway  is  made  a  thing  of  beauty  by  the  long 
lines  of  tall,  uniform,  symmetrical  shade  trees  on 
either  hand.  These  have  been  carefully  planted, 
of  course :  all  of  one  variety  and  equi-distant.  The 
common  roads  are  therefore  as  beautiful  as  our 
city  parks,  and  when  you  look  out  upon  the  vary- 
ing tints  of  the  growing  and  ripening  crops,  and 
the  perfect  proportions  of  each  field,  it  seems  as 
if  the  very  peasants  here  were  artists  working 
out  some  vision  on  a  canvas  of  earth  and  acres 
instead  of  on  one  of  fabric  and  inches.  Usually 
there  are  no  fences  between  one  small  farm  and 
another:  possibly  a  hedge,  but  more  often  one 
farmer's  last  row  of  potatoes,  or  a  trench  at  most, 
is  the  dividing  line  between  him  and  his  neigh- 
7 


78  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

bors.  As  one  of  my  friends  wrote  me  from  Eng- 
land two  years  ago :  "There  are  no  loose  ends  or 
ragged  edges  in  European  farming." 

No  Lands  Wasted  or  Mistreated. 

No  one  looking  at  the  farming  of  France  can 
get  away  from  the  impression  that  just  as  it  is  a 
curse  to  a  growing  boy  to  have  a  fortune  that  he 
may  spend  recklessly,  so  it  has  been  a  curse  to 
America  that  land  has  been  so  plentiful  that  the 
farmer  has  thought  it  no  economic  crime  to  lay 
waste  one  acre  and  then  clear  up  another  to  take 
its  place.  Neither  here  nor  in  England  would 
any  land-owner  think  for  a  moment  of  renting  a 
piece  of  land  to  an  ignorant  tenant  to  butcher  or 
maltreat  in  such  fashion  as  is  common  in  the 
South.  In  France,  as  I  have  said,  most  farms  are 
small  and  operated  by  their  owners — the  ideal 
condition ;  while  in  England  the  tenant  is  encour- 
aged to  improve  and  beautify  his  holdings:  my 
recollection  is  that  tenants  usually  lease  for  about 
ten  years  and  are  given  credit  at  the  end  of  that 
time  for  whatever  improvements  they  have  made. 

And  not  only  have  French  farmers  wrought 
out  these  things  in  their  own  land,  but  they  have 
carried  these  progressive  ideas  with  them  whcr- 


"the  pleasant  land  of  i^rance."        79 

ever  they  have  gone.  If  any  reader  object  that 
they  might  not  do  so  well  in  the  Cotton  States  of 
America,  let  me  remind  him  of  what  French 
colonists  and  French  influence  have  done  in  the 
worn  Barbary  coast  of  Africa.  It  is  a  matter  of 
casual  historical  comment  that  in  one  or  two  gen- 
erations French  rule  has  built  up  its  depleted  agri- 
culture and  "has  restored  the  fertility  and  bloom 
which  belonged  to  it  when  it  was  the  garden  of 
the  Roman  world." 

A  Story  Suggested  by  My  Pocketbook. 

Of  the  government  of  France  I  must  also  say  a 
word,  and  then  leave  my  impressions  of  Paris  for 
another  letter.  As  everybody  knows,  France 
from  1789  to  1 87 1  was  in  a  state  of  almost  un- 
ending turmoil.  The  year  first  mentioned  opens 
upon  one  of  the  most  corrupt,  extravagant,  stiff- 
necked  and  irresponsible  courts  with  which  any 
nation  has  ever  been  afflicted.  The  nightmare  of 
the  French  Revolution,  the  dictatorship  of  Na- 
poleon, the  restored  dynasty  of  the  Bourbons 
forced  upon  the  people  by  the  conquering  nations 
after  Waterloo  (1815),  the  Revolution  of  1830 
that  made  Louis  Philippe  King,  the  "second  Re- 
public" established  by  the  Revolution  of   1848, 


8o  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

the  "second  Empire"  that  followed  four  years 
later,  and  finally  the  "third  Republic,"  which  has 
now  endured  for  about  thirty  years — this  is  a 
suggestion  of  the  kaleidoscopic  changes  whose 
details  baffle  the  memory  and  leave  the  average 
reader  in  hopeless  confusion.  I  have  just  no- 
ticed, for  example,  that  in  my  purse  are  three 
pieces  of  French  money,  one  bearing  the  name  of 
"Louis  Philippe,  King,  1843,"  another  that  of 
"Napoleon  III,  Emperor,  i860,"  and  the  third 
that  of  the  "Republic  of  France,  1896."  In  effect 
France  was  for  a  hundred  years  a  sort  of  political 
experiment  station,  but  the  present  republican 
government  now  seems  firmly  established. 

How  the  French  People  Are  Governed  Now. 

The  President  is  elected  for  a  term  of  seven 
years.  The  Congress  consists  of  a  "House  of 
Deputies"  corresponding  to  our  national  House  of 
Representatives,  chosen  by  manhood  suffrage  for 
four  years;  the  Senators,  like  ours,  hold  for  six 
years,  and  are  elected  in  practically  the  same 
manner.  But  now  come  some  radical  differences 
between  our  system  and  the  French  system.  In 
the  first  place,  the  President  has  no  such  power 
as  the  President  of  the  United  States.    Like ,  the 


"the  pleasant  land  of  FRANCE."  8 1 

King  of  England,  he  is  little  more  than  a  figure- 
head, and  the  real  executive  work  is  done  through 
a  cabinet  or  ministry.  The  President  nominates 
the  ministers  but  they  cannot  act  until  the  House 
of  Deputies  accepts  them,  and  in  a  crisis  the 
House  can  force  the  President  to  resign  by  re- 
fusing to  accept  his  ministers  at  all.  Moreover, 
the  ministry  itself  must  resign  when  the  House 
of  Deputies  refuses  to  support  the  ministers' 
measures,  so  that  the  real  governing  power  of 
France  is  the  House  elected  direct  by  manhood 
suffrage.  It  is  much  as  if  our  national  House  of 
Representatives  in  America  could  compel  the 
President  or  his  cabinet  to  resign  by  refusing  to 
support  their  policies.  This,  of  course,  means  a 
government  more  quickly  responsive  to  public 
opinion:  if  the  United  States  were  governed  by 
the  French  plan,  the  election  of  a  Democratic 
House  of  Representatives  in  November  would 
put  that  party  in  virtual  control  of  the  entire 
government  at  once. 

The  dominant  party  in  France  now  is  what  is 
called  the  Radical-Socialist,  though  it  is  by  no 
means  so  extreme  as  the  name  sounds.  There  is 
another  party  (the  "Extreme  Socialists,"  I  be- 
lieve they  are  called)  who  stand  more  nearly  for 


82  A  SOUTHERNEIR  IN  EUROPE). 

the  doctrines  of  American  socialism.  The  policy 
of  the  present  government  looks  only  to  public 
ownership  of  what  we  call  "natural  monop- 
olies"— railways,  street  car  systems,  municipal 
lighting  plants,  etc.  The  people  already  own  the 
telegraph  and  telephone,  and  plans  are  now  on 
foot  looking  to  the  purchase  of  the  great  Western 
Railway  by  the  government,  as  a  start  in  the  di- 
rection of  general  government  ownership. 


VIII. 

Napoleon's  Tomb  and  Versailles. 

Paris,  Frances 
He  was  not  a  young  man  swept  off  his  feet  by 
youthful  enthusiasm:  he  was  a  man  upon  whose 
head  were  the  snows  of  more  than  three-score 
winters  but  whose  mind  is  as  active  as  ever,  and 
he  was  talking  to  me  last  spring  of  his  trip  to 
Europe,  and  especially  of  the  magnificent  mau- 
soleum which  the  French  people  have  erected  as 
the  last  resting  place  of  Napoleon  Bonaparte. 

"By  heaven,"  he  exclaimed,  "it  was  worth  the 
trip  across  the  Atlantic  to  stand  at  the  tomb  of 
that  colossal  man !" 

At  the  Tomb  of  Napoleon. 

I  am  now  almost  prepared  to  agree  with  him : 
certainly  I  have  seen  nothing  more  impressive 
since  I  left  America.  The  splendid  structure, 
beautiful  and  airy  as  a  palace,  built  entirely  of 
white  marble  and  surmounted  by  a  gilded  dome, 
itself  challenges  interest  and  admiration;  but  it 
is  only  when  we  enter  the  spacious  chapel  that 
the  sublimity  of  the  builder's  conception  dawns 
upon  us.     Here  is  solemnity  unmarred  by  any 


84  A  SOUTHEIRNER  IN  EUROPE. 

suggestion  of  the  funereal:  the  majesty  of  death 
without  any  trace  of  its  gruesomeness.  Massive 
bronze  doors  guard  the  entrance  to  where  the 
body  rests  in  the  immense  sarcophagus,  and  by 
the  side  of  the  doors  are  two  kingly  statues  bear- 
ing in  their  hands  the  symbols  of  earthly  power 
and  dominion,  the  one  the  globe  and  the  sword, 
the  other  the  crown  and  the  sceptre.  On  either 
side  stained  glass  windows  such  as  I  have  seen 
nowhere  else  in  the  world  let  in  the  light  in  a 
golden  flood,  suggesting  the  beauty  and  the  calm 
of  an  unending  sunset.  Above  you  are  the  words 
from  Napoleon's  will,  written  in  exile  in  distant 
St.  Helena :  "I  desire  that  my  body  shall  rest  on 
the  banks  of  the  Seine,  and  among  the  French 
people  whom  I  have  loved  so  well."  There  is 
pathos  unspeakable  about  the  words  and  about 
the  tragedy  which  they  call  to  mind.  Once  he 
could  have  willed  kingdoms  and  crowns;  the 
proudest  thrones  of  Europe  had  been  at  his  dis- 
posal, and  he  had  given  sceptres  to  his  brothers 
and  his  favorites  as  if  crowns  were  but  the 
baubles  of  an  hour.  Now  the  Napoleon  who 
makes  his  last  testament  sees  Death,  the  con- 


NAPOIvEON^S  TOMB  AND  VEIRSAILLES.  85 

queror  of  conquerors,  coming  as  a  welcome  re- 
lief, and  the  great  warrior  who — 

"once  trod  the  ways  of  glory 
And  sounded  all  the  depths  and  shoals  of  honor," 

can  will  little  but  his  body  itself,  and  can  not 
know  that  even  this  request  for  a  burial  place 
will  be  granted.  Weary  and  heartsick,  broken 
with  the  storms  of  state,  how  it  would  have  re- 
joiced his  heart  could  he  have  known  with  what 
honor  his  ashes  would  finally  be  entombed  in  his 
loved  Paris  and  how  here  for  ages  to  come 
travelers  from  every  corner  of  the  earth  would 
pause  to  pay  tribute  to  one  of  the  mightiest  men 
who  ever  walked  this  globe  of  ours. 

The  Threefold  Character  of  Napoleon's  Appeal 
to  Us. 

The  fame  of  Napoleon  is  the  surer  because  of 
the  threefold  character  of  his  appeal  to  human 
interest — the  romance  of  his  rise,  the  epic  of  his 
achievement,  the  tragedy  of  his  fall:  each  in  it- 
self sublime.  Born  of  humble  parents  and  upon 
a  narrow  island,  his  imperial  mind  and  will  won 
him  place  after  place  until  his  became  the  might- 
iest name  in  a  thousand  years  of  history.  Power 
such  as  the  Caesars  had  not  known  was  his,  and 


86  A  SOUTHEJRNDR  IN  EJUROPK. 

when  he  walked  into  the  church  of  St.  Denis  here 
to  wed  the  daughter  of  a  king,  he  might  have 
dreamed,  not  without  warrant,  of  becoming  the 
master  of  all  Europe. 

He  had  great  faults,  I  grant,  but  in  character 
few  of  our  chiefest  warrior-rulers  stand  above 
him ;  and  so  long  as  the  minds  of  men  are  stirred 
by  mighty  deeds  wrought  in  spite  of  frowning 
Circumstance,  and  so  long  as  men's  hearts  are 
moved  by  the  tragedy  of  a  great  man's  fall,  just 
so  long  will  the  blood  quicken  when  Napoleon's 
name  is  mentioned,  and  just  so  long  will  men 
make  pilgrimage  here,  as  I  have  done,  to  Notre 
Dame  where  he  was  crowned,  to  St.  Denis  where 
he  married,  to  the  mausoleum  where  he  is  buried, 
and  to  the  Museum  of  History  where  so  many 
relics,  both  of  his  noonday  glory  and  of  his  twi- 
Hght  in  lonely  St.  Helena,  are  shown  to  interested 
thousands. 

Of  so  much  interest  is  the  career  of  Napoleon, 
and  I  have  seen  so  many  traces  of  his  footsteps 
here — some  of  his  letters,  his  coronation  robes, 
his  bedroom  and  re?:eption  rooms  at  Versailles, 
the  unpromising-looking  rooms  overlooking  the 
Seine  where  he  lodged  before  he  became  famous, 
his  chair  and  bench  and    camp    bed  from    St. 


napouxjn's  tomb  and  vi:rsaii:.i.e;s.        87 

Helena,  and  his  sword,  saddle,  hat  and  his  famous 
war  coat — that  it  is  hard  not  to  give  an  entire 
article  to  this  one  subject;  but  I  must  hurry  on, 
for  Paris  is  full  of  historic  and  notable  spots,  and 
I  am  trying  to  tell  in  a  letter  what  should  be  told 
in  a  book. 

In  the  Royal  Palace  of  Versailles. 

Our  first  full  day  in  Paris  was  spent  at  Ver- 
sailles, where  the  French  Kings  once  lived  in 
shameless  extravagance  and  unconcern,  and 
where  a  corrupt  and  profligate  court  once  piled 
up  wrath  against  the  day  of  wrath,  until  the  storm 
broke  in  blood  and  fury  upon  them  some  six-score 
years  ago.  For  long,  long  decades  had  the  weary 
peasants  of  France  toiled  from  year's  end  to 
year's  end  only  to  see  King  and  priest  and  noble 
seize  the  lion's  share  of  their  hard-won  harvests, 
government  and  church  all  the  while  growing 
more  haughty  and  corrupt,  and  the  burdened 
peasant's  lot  harder  and  more  hopeless.  Stolid 
and  spiritless  perhaps  this  peasant  seemed  to  the 
proud  nobles  who  lived  upon  his  labors  and  de- 
spised him,  who  felt  that  neither  he  nor  his  fam- 
ily had  any  rights  that  they  were  bound  to  re- 
spect; and  yet  an  Edwin  Markham  would  have 


88  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

seen  in  this  oppressed  and  clouted  figure  the  por- 
tent and  prophecy  of  the  coming  revolution. 

"0  masters,  lords  and  rulers  in  all  lands, 
How  will  the  future  reckon  with  this  Man? 
How  answer  his  brute  question  in  that  hour 
When  whirlwinds  of  rebellion  shake  the  world? 
How  will  it  be  with  kingdoms  and  with  kings — 
With  those  who  shaped  him  to  the  thing  he  is — 
When  this  dumb  Terror  shall  reply  to  God 
After  the  silence  of  the  centuries?" 

Let  us  go,  then,  to  Versailles  to-day  and  see 
where  the  French  Babylon  once  reared  its  lofty 
head,  where  women  as  vile  as  they  were  beautiful 
once  ruled  the  court  of  France,  and  where  the 
peasant's  hard-earned  taxes  were  wasted  in  vice 
and  gambling  and  display.  Here  before  us  now 
is  the  gorgeous  bed  upon  which  Louis  XIV,  "the 
Grand  Monarch,"  died  in  171 5,  and  we  may  well 
wonder  if  in  death  the  avenging  angel  did  not 
whisper  to  him  of  the  impending  doom  which 
his  folly  had  done  so  much  to  insure ;  or  if  neither 
he  nor  his  yet  more  worthless  successor,  Louis 
XV  (who  died  in  the  room  to  our  left),  did  not 
once  stumble  upon  a  hearing  or  reading  of  that 
passage  wherein  we  are  told  that  the  cries  of  the 
defrauded  laborer  have  "entered  into  the  ears  of 
the  Lord  of  Sabaoth,"  and — 

"Your  riches  are  corrupted  and  your  garments  are 


napoleon's  tomb  and  VERSAILLItS.  89 

moth-eaten.  Your  gold  and  silver  is  cankered  and  the 
rust  of  them  shall  be  a  witness  against  you,  and  shall 
eat  your  flesh  as  it  were  fire." 

The  Lesson  of  the  Ancient  Court. 

We  may  not  know  whether  or  not  this  fearfuj 
warning  ever  came  to  the  ears  of  the  pleasure- 
loving  court  that  once  flitted  through  the  royal 
palace  of  Versailles,  but  the  record  of  these  his- 
toric walls  only  affords  fresh  proof  that  the 
Apostle's  language  is  sound  political  as  well  as 
religious  doctrine.  The  mills  of  the  gods  grind 
slowly,  but  they  grind  exceedingly  small.  The 
avenging  Nemesis  of  nations  never  sleeps;  the 
relentless  rectitude  of  Nature  never  fails.  On 
heedless  ears  too  often  falls  the  phrase,  "The 
wages  of  sin  is  death,"  and  yet  all  human  history, 
even  more  loudly  than  the  Book  of  Books  itself, 
proclaims  the  truth  of  this  everlasting  doctrine. 
To-day  "careless  seems  the  Great  Avenger"  as  we 
look  upon  Versailles,  and  with  our  mind's  eye 
people  it  again  with  those  lordly  figures  who 
"have  lived  in  pleasure  on  the  earth  and  been 
wanton,  who  have  condemned  and  killed  the 
just" ;  but  yonder  in  the  distance  looms  the  Place 
la  Concorde  where  with  our  mind's  eye  we  see 
the  bloody  guillotine,  and  the  heads  of  King  and 
Queen  and  nobles  required  in  this  final  settle- 


90  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE). 

ment  with  long  delayed  and  patient  Justice.  The 
debt  of  the  ages  is  settled.  Those  who  have  sown 
the  wind  have  reaped  the  whirlwind — or  alas! 
in  too  many  cases,  not  they  themselves,  but  their 
children  and  children's  children. 

The  Relentless  Rectitude  of  Nature. 

This  is  the  tragedy  of  life — that  Nature,  itself 
immortal,  reckons  not  of  man's  mortality.  Your 
father  owed  a  debt  and  died  having  enjoyed  but 
not  having  settled :  and  you,  standing  in  his  place, 
must  pay.  Your  father,  through  sin  and  crime, 
made  grievous  debt  to  Nature,  and  his  children, 
with  meaner  souls  and  diseased  bodies,  must  pay 
the  price.  And  even  so  one  generation  of  citi- 
zens permits  injustice,  fosters  evil, — whether  by 
indifference  or  by  vicious  intent,  it  matters  not — 
and  the  next  generation  must  pay  the  price  in 
war  and  riot  and  revolution.  Our  Revolutionary 
fathers  in  America,  North  and  South,  tempted  of 
Mammon,  permitted  and  encouraged  the  sin  of 
human  slavery;  our  fathers  a  generation  ago, 
from  North  and  South,  paid  the  awful  price  in 
peace  and  blood  and  treasure.  The  French  nobil- 
ity for  centuries  ground  the  faces  of  the  poor, 
violated  their  homes,  robbed  them  of  the  fruits 


NAPOI^ieON'S  TOMB  AND  VERSAII^LES.  9 1 

of  their  labor,  until  the  French  Revolution,  the 
hideous  progeny  of  their  long,  long  years  of  evil, 
came  forth  in  the  fullness  of  time  to  plague  their 
children  and  to  stand  forever  as  one  of  the  most 
fearful  epochs  in  human  history.  Read  Dickens's 
"Tale  of  Two  Cities"  and  the  story  of  the  pris- 
oner in  the  Bastille  (Dr.  Manette,  I  think,  is  the 
name)  and  you  will  wonder  how  any  one  could 
have  expected  any  other  harvest  from  such  a 
sowing. 

For  the  excesses  of  the  Revolution  I  have  no 
excuse ;  no  one  is  further  than  I  from  wishing  to 
palliate  its  own  shameful  crimes.  But  no  one 
who  knows  history  can  stand  to-day  at  Versailles 
and  think  of  its  corrupt  court,  the  symbol  of 
wrong  and  oppression,  and  then  stand  to-morrow 
at  the  Place  la  Concorde  and  think  of  the  hun- 
dreds of  nobles  whose  lives  the  infuriated  popu- 
lace here  required,  and  not  see  that  the  one  fol- 
lows the  other  as  inevitably  as  the  night  the  day. 

With  nations  as  with  individuals,  it  is  the  weary 
round  of  history:  to-day  you  make  the  debt,  to- 
morrow you  must  pay  the  price.  Whatsoever 
man  or  nation  soweth  that  also  shall  man  or 
nation  reap. 


IX. 
A  Land  Where  Everybody  Works. 

Cologne:,  Germany. 

In  the  letter  just  preceding  my  last,  I  had 
much  to  say  concerning  the  excellence  of  French 
farming,  but  I  have  since  seen  an  even  more 
highly  developed  system  of  agriculture  than  that 
I  found  in  France.  There  is  perhaps  no  more 
careful  farming  anywhere  on  earth  than  in  the 
little  countries  of  Belgium  and  Holland  through 
which  I  have  now  been  traveling  for  some  days, 
while  in  Germany,  which  I  have  just  reached,  the 
land  appears  to  be  little  less  fruitful. 

Neither  Belgium  nor  Holland  is  more  than  one- 
fifth  the  size  of  an  average  Southern  State,  yet 
each  supports  a  population  three  times  as  large. 
If  either  North  Carolina  or  Mississippi  were  as 
thickly  settled  as  Belgium,  the  population  would 
be  about  30,000,000,  or  one-third  that  of  the  en- 
tire United  States.  Belgium  is  also  remarkable 
as  showing  what  a  high  degree  of  fertility  has 
been  developed  in  what  was  originally  a  poor 
sandy  soil — this  having  been  so  carefully  built  up 
by  skillful  cultivation  that  this  little  kingdom — 
no  larger  than  a  dozen  good-sized  counties — pro- 


A  I.AND  where:  everybody  works.        93 

duced  on  its  small  arable  area  last  year  more  than 
15,000,000  bushels  of  wheat,  besides  an  enormous 
production    of    truck,    vegetables,    and    feeding 
crops. 
The  Kingly  Horses  of  Belgium  and  Holland. 

And  the  horses,  the  magnificent  horses:  they 
are  themselves  worth  coming  across  the  ocean  to 
see!  If  I  had  wanted  anything  else  to  convince 
me  of  the  necessity  of  fighting  for  better  work- 
horses in  the  South,  this  trip  to  Europe  would 
have  supplied  it.  Do  you  remember  that  picture 
we  had  on  our  first  page  about  six  weeks  ago, 
"The  Sort  of  Work-Horses  Western  Farmers 
Use,"  showing  four  big,  muscular,  magnificent- 
looking  horses  ready  to  hitch  to  the  harrow? 
The  picture  must  have  impressed  you,  for  we 
don't  often  see  such  big,  strong  fellows  in  the 
Cotton  Belt.  Well,  anyhow,  it  is  horses  such  as 
these  that  you  see  on  European  farms,  and  it  is 
with  them  that  the  farmers  here  break  and  culti- 
vate the  land  with  such  thoroughness  as  to  pro- 
duce the  splendid  crops  I  have  seen  growing 
everywhere  I  have  yet  been. 

As  for  the  draft  horses  in  the  cities,  they  have 
been  the  admiration  of  our  entire  party.     Col- 


94  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

lege  professors,  college  girls,  lawyers — everybody 
has  paid  the  Dutch  and  Belgian  horses  tributes 
of  interest,  inspection  and  praise  such  as  even 
the  masterpieces  of  art  in  the  great  galleries  here 
have  not  always  called  forth.  "Why,  they  look 
as  big  as  Barnum's  elephants,"  was  the  not  un- 
justifiable declaration  of  a  young  lady  as  the  great 
Percherons  passed  by  us.  Kingly  horses,  bearing 
themselves  as  if  conscious  of  royal  blood,  strong 
as  lions,  but  thoroughly  gentle,  beautiful  in 
form,  hauling  gigantic  loads  on  wagons  which 
when  empty  would  alone  make  good  loads  for  the 
miserable  looking  dray-horses  belabored  by  negro 
drivers  in  our  Southern  towns — and  doing  it  all 
with  such  wonderful  ease  and  with  such  majestic 
and  rhythmical  movements  that  it  is  a  positive 
pleasure  just  to  watch  them  for  an  hour  at  a 
time. 

"I  Haven't  Seen  a  Horse's  Ribs  in  Europe!" 

Over  here  in  Europe  the  farmers  believe  in 
three  things:  (i)Good  stock;  (2)  plenty  of  it; 
(3)  good  care  of  it.  The  only  exception  I  would 
make  to  this  last  statement  is  the  cow.  It  rather 
goes  against  the  grain  with  me  to  see  cows 
hitched  to  carts  like  oxen,  as  is  commonly  done  in 


A  LAND  WHERE  EVERYBODY  WORKS.  95 

many  European  countries,  especially  Germany; 
but  even  these  cows,  I  must  say,  seem  sleek,  well 
fed  and  in  good  spirits.  I  haven't  seen  a  horse's 
ribs  nor  a  cow's  since  I  have  been  in  Europe :  the 
European  won't  have  poor  stock.  Neither  have 
I  seen  a  mule — and  this  reminds  me  to  say  that 
of  course  there  are  no  negroes,  except  a  few 
negro  tourists. 

Before  passing  to  any  other  question,  how- 
ever, let  me  correct  any  impression  that  the  cow 
is  discriminated  against  over  here  in  that  she 
must  often  pull  carts  or  plows,  and  so  assist  in 
making  and  harvesting  the  crops.  In  Europe 
everything  works.  That  is  why  these  countries 
support  ten  to  twenty  times  the  population  sup- 
ported by  similar  areas  in  America.  Even  the 
dogs  are  pressed  into  service,  and  little  carts 
drawn  by  one,  two  or  three  big  dogs  are  common 
sights  in  Amsterdam,  Antwerp  and  Brussels. 

The  Tzvo  Secrets  of  German  and  Dutch  Pros- 
perity. 

The  dogs  work,  the  cows  work,  the  wind 
works — everybody  works,  including  father,  and 
the  very  breezes  that  pass  across  the  country  are 
caught,  like  Kansas    tramps    in    harvest    time, 


g6  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

harnessed  to  thousands  of  Dutch  wind-mills,  and 
set  to  work  to  grind  the  wheat,  cut  the  wood, 
and  drain  the  swamps.  In  Germany  even  the 
King  and  the  King's  son  must  learn  a  trade,  and 
the  secret  of  the  prosperity  of  all  these  crowded, 
overflowing  countries,  in  my  opinion,  lies  in  two 
things : 

(i)  An  intelligent  population,  ivith  their 
natural  intelligence  trained  and  sharpened  by 
education. 

(2)  No  man  or  woman  thinks  of  any  task  that 
comes  to  hand  as  being  beneath  him  or  her. 

Time  and  again  on  this  trip  have  I  seen  hotel 
proprietors  or  managers,  men  of  education,  in- 
telligence and  refinement,  come  into  kitchen  or 
dining  room  in  case  of  a  rush  and  assist  in  wait- 
ing on  the  table  as  if  it  were  the  most  natural 
thing  in  the  world.  And  this  is  but  an  illustration 
of  the  general  attitude  here  toward  all  work. 
"Whatsoever  thy  hand  findeth  to  do,  do  it  with 
thy  might"  was  good  doctrine  in  Solomon's  time, 
and  it  is  good  doctrine  for  Europe,  the  Cotton 
States,  or  for  any  other  part  of  the  world  to-day. 
Dr.  Walter  H.  Page  never  said  a  truer  thing  than 
when  he  declared,  "It  is  better  to  make  good 
split-bottom  chairs  than  it  is  to  be  an  unpro- 
ductive 'prominent  citizen.'  " 


A  LAND  where;  EIVERYBODY  WORKS.  97 

To  do  work  badly  degrades  it:  that  is  the 
trouble  with  us  in  the  South.  Our  old  slave- 
holding  aristocracy  set  the  ignorant  new-caught 
African  savage  to  doing  work  for  them,  and  he 
worked  so  badly  that  they  began  to  think  it  dis- 
creditable to  be  a  worker  at  all.  What  I  have 
seen  in  Europe  thus  far  has  only  deepened  and 
confirmed  the  conviction  which  travel  and  obser- 
vation in  the  South  from  Virginia  to  Texas  had 
already  developed  in  my  mind,  namely,  that  lack 
of  intelligence  or  education  on  the  part  of  any 
considerable  part  of  its  population  is  a  millstone 
about  the  neck  of  any  community. 

Without  Intelligent  Labor  No  Nation  Can 
Prosper. 

There  is  no  task  under  heaven  which  an  intel- 
ligent man  can  not  do  better  and  more  cheaply 
than  an  unintelligent  man ;  there  is  no  work  under 
heaven  which  can  not  be  done  better  and  more 
cheaply  by  educated  labor  than  by  uneducated. 
There  is  no  other  way  given  among  men  whereby 
a  nation  can  achieve  greatness  than  by  training, 
developing  and  educating  its  people,  its  common 
people.  Every  live,  forceful  nation  in  Europe  to- 
day bears  witness  to  this  truth :  in  them  you  see 


98  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

even  the  cab  drivers  reading  the  daily  papers  with 
the  same  intelligent  interest  with  which  mer- 
chants and  lawyers  seem  to  read  them  in  America, 
and  even  the  peasants  here  in  their  plain  clothes 
go  to  see  the  great  masterpieces  of  art,  as  some 
of  them  were  doing  when  I  stood  with  them  in 
Amsterdam  to  admire  Rembrandt's  most  famous 
pictures. 

Take  Germany,  with  her  magnificent  system  of 
industrial  schools,  the  best  in  the  world,  and  her 
industrious  and  prosperous  people  who  have  sent 
articles  with  the  brand  "Made  in  Germany"  into 
every  quarter  of  the  globe,  then  contrast  this 
strong  and  powerful  nation  and  her  skilled  and 
educated  workers  with  degenerate  Spain,  where 
free  thought  has  been  stifled  for  centuries  and 
education  neglected.  In  Spain  you  find  the  real 
"Man  With  the  Hoe"  whom  Markham  depicted 
in  his  matchless  poem :  hopeless  workers,  "broth- 
ers to  the  ox,"  who  cultivate  narrow  patches 
without  horses,  breaking  the  land  by  digging  it 
up  with  short-handled,  back-breaking,  mattock- 
like grubbing  hoes ;  and  the  land  going  to  waste 
for  lack  of  intelligent  attention.  Spain  (with 
more  than  half  her  people  illiterate)  bankrupt, 
poverty-stricken,  despised;  Germany   (with  her 


A  LAND  where:  everybody  WORKS.  99 

magnificent  trade  schools  and  general  system  of 
education)  progressing  more  rapidly  this  last 
generation  than  possibly  any  other  nation  in  the 
world,  if  due  allowance  be  made  for  the  differ- 
ence in  natural  resources  between  Germany  and 
America  during  this  period! 

Small  wonder  that  when  Germany  whipped 
dumbfounded  France  with  such  astounding 
celerity  in  1870,  France  proceeded  to  make  in- 
quiry as  to  the  secret  of  Germany's  wonderful 
strength — and  at  once  adopted  the  German  idea 
of  thorough  and  compulsory  public  education  for 
all  her  own  people ;  the  effects  of  which  are  now 
also  seen  in  the  unexampled  prosperity  of  France, 
whose  people    have  become    the    richest  in    all 

Europe. 

German  Education  is  Practical. 

Education  in  Germany  has  been  made  to  train 
for  actual  life  and  work:  that  is  the  secret,  and 
it  is  a  lesson  which  we  in  the  South  can  not  take 
too  seriously  to  heart.  If  German  authorities  had 
been  in  charge  of  Southern  education,  we  should 
have  had  splendidly  equipped  agricultural  high 
schools  in  every  county  or  Congressional  district 
long  before  this,  and  the  elements  of  agriculture 
and  domestic  science  would  be  taught  in  every 


lOO  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

rural  school,  whether  elementary  school  or 
academy. 

To  me  it  is  positively  heart-sickening  to  go  out 
into  the  academies  in  our  country  districts  in  the 
South  and  see  girls  who  are  going  to  be  farmers' 
wives  struggling  with  the  conjugation  of  Latin 
verbs  while  they  learn  never  a  thing  about  the 
chemistry  of  bread-making  and  do  not  even  know 
under  what  conditions  a  meat  should  be  put  into 
the  water  after  it  is  boiling  and  under  what  con- 
ditions it  should  be  put  in  while  the  water  is  cold. 
Their  husbands  and  children  will  have  their  lives 
saddened  and  shortened  by  indigestion  and  im- 
proper nutrition ;  but  of  course  it  would  be  undig- 
nified and  therefore  unthinkable  for  sweet  college 
girls  to  learn  anything  about  cooking! 

And  the  boys  who  are  going  to  be  farmers — 
they  are  also  studying  Caesar  and  "latitude  and 
longitude"  and  "the  metric  system  of  weights  and 
measures"  while  they  learn  nothing  whatever  of 
how  to  compound  a  feeding  ration  so  as  to  get 
milk  or  butter  cheapest,  and  nothing  whatever  of 
soil  fertility  and  its  management,  by  which  the 
$60,000,000  a  year  spent  by  farmers  in  Georgia 
and  adjoining  States  might  be  largely  saved! 
But  of  course  that,  too,  would  be  undignified, 


A  LAND  WHERE  EVERYBODY  WORKS.  Id 

and  it  might  shock  your  professor  if  you  were  to 
bring  the  matter  to  his  attention. 

One  Stupendous  Fallacy  We  Must  Put  Forever 
Behind  Us. 

The  whole  tragic  system  is  an  outgrowth  of 
our  idea  that  labor  is  degrading,  and  this  is  the 
fallacy  we  must  put  forever  behind  us  before  we 
can  ever  measure  up  to  our  opportunities.  When 
man  had  once  fallen,  had  once  eaten  the  forbid- 
den fruit,  the  only  way  the  Lord  Himself  could 
find  to  keep  him  from  going  utterly  to  the  Devil 
was  to  put  him  to  work;  and  it  is  high  time  for 
us  to  come  to  see  that  corn  roots  and  cotton  roots 
are  just  as  honorable  and  legitimate  subjects  of 
interest  and  mental  development  as  Greek  roots 
and  Latin  roots. 

Take  my  own  case  now  in  connection  with  this 
very  European  trip:  When  I  was  in  a  country 
school  I  spent  considerable  time  studying  about 
English  money,  but  when  I  reached  Scotland  the 
other  week  I  didn't  know  the  worth  of  a  shilling 
nor  how  many  pence  it  takes  to  make  one.  I  also 
spent  some  time  as  a  farm  boy  studying  the 
metric  system  of  weights  and  measures,  but  now 
that  I  have  reached  a  metric  system  country  at 


102  A  SOUTHEJRNER  IN  EUROPE. 

last,  I  have  no  idea  in  the  world  as  to  how  much 
a  kilometer  is. 

All  this  information  perished  with  the  learn- 
ing— even  for  me,  although  I  have  made  a  trip 
to  Europe  as  not  one  schoolboy  in  a  thousand 
ever  grows  up  to  do.  It  would  have  been  knowl- 
edge that  would  have  stayed  with  me,  knowledge 
that  would  have  been  put  to  interest  in  all  the 
life  around  me,  if  I  had  learned  in  the  school 
about  the  laws  of  plant  and  animal  life,  about 
how  to  compound  feeding  rations  and  fertilizer 
formulas,  about  the  breeds  and  types  of  horses, 
hogs  and  cattle,  etc.,  and  this  practical  and  useful 
knowledge  (as  no  sane  man  can  deny)  would 
have  been  just  as  useful  to  me  in  mental  training 
as  were  the  miscellaneous  masses  of  foreign,  life- 
less and  useless  information  which  were  thrust 
upon  me. 

Let's  Learn  a  Lesson  From  Germany. 

It  is  the  same  way  with  the  education  of  our 
girls.  A  young  woman — and  an  unusually  intel- 
ligent young  woman,  too, — who  was  with  me  in 
Paris  the  other  day,  had  spent  four  years  studying 
French  at  one  of  our  Southern  colleges,  and  yet 
in  the  five  or  six  years  time  since  then  she  had 
forgotten  the  language  so  completely  that    she 


A  LAND  WHERE  EVERYBODY  WORKS.  IO3 

couldn't  even  bargain  with  the  cabman  about  our 
trip  to  St.  Denis  Church.  And  she  studied  chem- 
istry, too, — though  to  make  this  practical  and 
apply  the  principles  of  chemistry  to  cooking  in 
our  girls'  schools  is,  of  course,  out  of  the  ques- 
tion. 

France  was  wise  enough  when  Germany  licked 
her,  and  when  she  saw  Germany  beating  the 
world  in  industrial  skill,  to  wake  up  and  adopt 
the  German  idea  of  education  for  her  own — com- 
pulsory education,  universal  education,  industrial 
education.  The  South,  I  repeat,  should  take  the 
same  lesson  to  heart.  We  are  largely  of  the  same 
stock  as  the  Germans — nothing  on  my  trip  has 
impressed  me  more  forcibly  than  the  striking  re- 
semblance of  the  men  and  women  in  a  German 
crowd  to  those  in  an  American  crowd — and  the 
same  policies  of  practical  education  and  training 
which  have  made  the  German  people  prosperous 
and  powerful  will  work  a  like  revolution  in  the 
South. 

Let  us  set  ourselves  to  the  task. 


X. 

Wise  Economies  America  Should  Learn 
From  Europe. 

Heidelberg,  Germany. 

There  are  so  many  beautiful  and  notable  places 
in  Europe  that  I  could  give  all  my  time  in  these 
letters  to  mere  descriptions  of  interesting  towns, 
cathedrals,  public  buildings,  rivers,  mountains, 
etc.,  if  I  were  so  inclined,  and  if  other  writers 
had  not  already  written  of  them  in  far  more  enter- 
taining fashion  than  I  could  hope  to  do.  But 
until  our  people  come  to  a  greater  appreciation  of 
the  beautiful  that  is  at  our  own  doors  in  America, 
I  do  not  think  it  worth  my  while  to  take  up  space 
in  extensive  descriptions  of  Europe's  far-away 
glories. 

Besides,  it  is  the  common  beauties  round 
about  us  that  are  most  worthy  of  our  attention 
anyhow.  Every  fair  day  the  sunset  paints  a  pic- 
ture for  you  more  splendid  and  inspiring  than 
any  artist  has  ever  yet  been  able  to  put  upon 
canvas.  Every  night  the  heavens  "declare  the 
glory  of  God  and  the  firmament  showeth  His 
handiwork"  to  a  greater  degree  than  any  other 
natural  scenery  in  the  world.     I  like  that  story 


ECONOMIES  AMERICA  SHOULD  LEARN.        IO5 

of  the  old  Scotchman  who  went  up  the  little 
mountain  peak  every  morning  to  see  the  sun  rise 
and  "to  take  off  his  hat  to  the  glory  of  the  world," 
as  he  expressed  it.  "The  meanest  flower  that 
blows"  has  interest  and  meaning,  and  for  every 
person  who  loves  the  true  and  the  beautiful — 

"Earth's  crammed  with  Heaven 
And  every  common  bush  afire  with  God." 

America  Wasting  Opportunities  for  Beauty. 

If  our  farms  were  only  as  carefully  tilled,  if 
our  farmhouses  were  only  as  tastefully  built  and 
painted,  if  there  were  the  same  wealth  of  shrub 
and  vine  and  flower  about  them,  and  if  we  could 
do  away  with  ramshackle  cabins  and  scrubby,  ill- 
fed  stock  (and  put  in  about  five  times  as  much 
good  stock  instead)  America  would  be  as  beauti- 
ful as  Europe. 

The  women  of  the  South  can  not  do  better 
than  to  join  hands,  all  of  them,  in  a  crusade  for 
more  beautiful  homes,  more  beautiful  school- 
houses  and  grounds,  more  beautiful  towns  and 
cities.  Wherever  villages  are  starting,  let  them 
begin  in  time  to  lay  off  broad  streets  and  parks, 
and  let  young  trees  be  set  out  even  on  avenues 
where  no  one  may  live  for  twenty  years  to  come ; 


I06  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

and  on  our  farms,  of  course,  there  is  no  excuse 
for  not  having  all  the  glory  that  tree,  shrub,  vine, 
flower  and  grasses  can  bring  to  a  dwelling  place. 
And  here  there  comes  to  my  mind  a  picture  of 
the  beautiful  roads  in  France,  lined  with  tall 
Lombardy  poplars  waving  in  the  breeze,  and  es- 
pecially the  memory  of  a  humble  village  out  of 
which  for  a  mile  runs  one  long  magnificent 
avenue  of  such  trees — an  avenue  which  strikes 
the  traveler  as  being  little  less  than  a  master- 
piece of  art,  giving  a  glory  and  distinction  to 
the  town  such  as  once  seen  can  never  be  for- 
gotten. And  yet  almost  any  Southern  village — 
any  farm  roadside  for  that  matter — might  have 
such  a  vision  of  beauty  within  a  comparatively 
short  time  if  the  proper  trees  were  planted  now. 
The  trouble  is  that  America  is  wasting  oppor- 
tunities for  beauty  just  as  it  is  wasting  its  oppor- 
tunities for  a  thousand  other  things.  Before  I 
left  New  York  I  wrote  that  I  was  coming  back  to 
"our  old  home,"  back  to  the  old  homestead  from 
which  we  Americans  went  out  to  seek  better  for- 
tunes in  a  new  world ;  and  in  coming  back  to  the 
ancestral  dwelling  place  nothing  has  impressed 
me  more  than  the  fact  that  we,  too,  are  playing 
the  prodigal  son  and  wasting  our  substance  in 


ECONOMIISS  AMERICA  SHOULD  LEARN.         IO7 

riotous  living.  The  wastes  of  America  would 
make  Europe  rich.  It  is  well  indeed  that  the 
Governors  of  all  the  States  and  the  country's 
leading  thinkers  and  scientists  are  at  last  meeting 
and  planning  together  in  ''Conferences  for  the 
Conservation  of  Our  Natural  Resources." 

No  Gullied  Land  in  Germany. 

I  saw  more  gullied,  wasted,  desolated,  heart- 
sickening  land  in  fifteen  minutes  time  between 
Birmingham  and  Memphis  last  April  than  I  have 
seen  in  a  thousand  miles  of  European  travel  up  to 
this  time.  The  steep  banks  of  the  river  Rhine 
are  as  carefully  cultivated  as  a  garden.  Rock 
terrace  after  rock  terrace  has  been  built  above 
you  to  keep  the  land  from  washing.  I  recall 
counting  at  one  place  thirteen  distinct  rows  of 
stone  terraces  on  one  hillside,  and  on  others  there 
were  an  even  larger  number.  It  is  on  such  land 
that  the  famous  Rhine  vineyards  are  cultivated — 
on  land  often  so  steep  that  a  horse  can  not  walk 
over  it,  and  all  the  work  must  be  done  by  hand. 
And  in  Germany,  as  well  as  in  Belgium,  France 
and  Holland,  great  numbers  of  cattle  are  grown, 
and  the  land  carefully  enriched  with  the  manure. 
Mr.  R.  H.  Battle  was  telling   me  only   a  short 


I08  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

time  before  I  left  home  of  a  German  tenant  he 
had  some  years  ago.  "The  man  wanted  to  put 
everything  back  on  the  land,"  said  Mr.  Battle; 
"his  sole  idea  seemed  to  be  to  build  it  up  and  en- 
rich it."  And  this  feeling  was  so  different  from 
the  usual  land-skinning  ideas  of  Southern  tenants 
that  Mr.  Battle  was  naturally  amazed.  The 
legumes  are  largely  raised  here,  too — alfalfa  and 
the  clovers ;  and  almost  every  field  bears  evidence 
of  a  systematic  rotation  of  crops. 

How  the  Forests  Are  Cared  For. 

Then  take  the  forests.  Over  here  their  owners 
have  come  to  see  what  we  in  America  have  not 
yet  come  to  understand,  namely,  that  the  timber 
crop  is  a  crop  just  as  surely  as  corn  or  cotton, 
even  if  it  does  take  years  instead  of  months  for  it 
to  reach  the  harvesting  stage.  And  the  govern- 
ment over  here,  moreover,  realized  long  ago  the 
importance  of  forest  preservation,  while  our  Con- 
gressmen in  Washington  continue  to  kill  the  bills 
that  would  preserve  the  wealth  of  our  great  Ap- 
palachian and  White  Mountain  timber  lands.  In 
Germany  such  areas  are  under  strict  government 
supervision.  Lumbermen  are  not  permitted  to 
waste  the  timber,  but  are  allowed  to  cut  only  so 
much  a  year  and  of  trees  of  the  prescribed  size; 


ECONOMIES  AMERICA  SHOUI.D  LEARN.         IO9 

and  there  are  also  strict  regulations  about  re- 
foresting. And  if  there  are  those  who  object  to 
the  expense  of  maintaining  such  supervision,  let 
me  remind  them  that  it  is  the  experience  of 
Germany  that  the  saving  through  the  prevention 
of  forest  fires  alone  far  more  than  pays  every 
expense  incurred  in  this  notable  and  fruitful 
work.  It  is  interesting  to  go  through  the  woods 
and  see  how  the  trees  of  the  right  size  have  been 
marked,  cut,  and  carried  out  without  one-tenth 
the  damage  to  other  timber  an  average  American 
lumberman  would  inflict. 

Saving  a  Country's  Best  Resources. 

Not  only  are  the  resources  of  land  and  forest 
thus  carefully  conserved,  but  the  greatest  re- 
sources of  any  nation — the  minds  of  its  people — 
are  trained  and  developed,  as  I  set  forth  in  my 
last  letter,  by  a  splendid  scheme  of  public  educa- 
tion, universal,  industrial  and  even  compulsory. 
More  early  here  than  in  America,  too,  was  the 
folly  of  grinding  out  the  lives  and  stunting  the 
bodies  of  children  in  factory  work  recognized  and 
remedied.  It  has  been  only  a  few  years  since  the 
great  State  of  South  Carolina  officially  advertised 

its  own  shame  by  publishing  as  an  inducement  for 
9 


no  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

capital  and  for  immigration  that  it  had  no  laws 
regulating  hours  of  labor  or  ages  for  employ- 
ment, while  wiser  England  more  than  sixty  years 
ago  saw  the  folly  of  ruining  its  future  citizenship 
and  adopted  a  general  ten-hour  policy  in  her 
factories — providing,  too,  for  a  rigid  system  of 
factory  inspection,  the  absence  of  which  has  made 
many  a  so-called  child  labor  law  in  the  South  a 
snare  and  a  delusion. 

The  actual  saving  of  human  life  itself  also  has 
far  more  attention  here  than  in  America.  I 
should  be  afraid  to  quote  figures  from  memory, 
but  I  know  that  in  the  matter  of  railroad  wrecks, 
for  example,  the  American  lines,  in  proportion  to 
traffic  handled,  kill  and  wound  a  fearfully  and 
shockingly  larger  number  of  passengers  and  em- 
ployees. European  superiority  here  is  partly  due 
to  the  use  of  a  better  signal  and  checking  service, 
thereby  preventing  many  collisions ;  partly  to  the 
general  absence  of  level  crossings,  the  railroad 
tracks  going  either  under  or  over  the  public  road, 
and  partly  to  the  tracks  being  freed  from  pedes- 
trians by  protecting  hedges  or  fences. 

One  other  illustration  of  the  greater  care  of 
life  and  property  over  here,  and  I  am  done  with 
that  division  of  my  subject.    I  refer  to  the  better 


e:CONOMIES  AMERICA  SHOUI.D  I.EARN.         Ill 

regulations  for  fire  prevention  in  towns  and 
cities — stricter  rules  in  regard  to  the  erection  of 
buildings,  etc.,  etc.  Only  this  week  an  English 
authority  has  published  the  exact  figures  regard- 
ing comparative  fire  losses  in  Europe  and 
America  for  a  series  of  years,  showing  the  per 
capita  loss  in  America  to  be  more  than  nine  times 
as  great  as  here. 

All  these  things,  together  with  other  facts  that 
I  have  already  given  with  regard  to  agriculture, 
and  might  give  with  regard  to  other  things,  are 
enough,  1  submit,  to  warrant  my  conclusions, 
first,  that  we  Americans,  going  from  this  old 
European  home  to  the  far,  strange  land  of 
America,  have  literally  played  the  part  of  the 
prodigal  son  of  the  parable;  and,  second,  that 
Europe  would  make  itself  rich  on  what  America 
wastes. 

T'he  Torrens  System  a  Working  Success. 

And  as  an  afterthought,  I  think  it  not  out  of 
place  to  mention  here  a  matter  whose  importance 
is  too  little  recognized  in  America — our  wasteful, 
antiquated,  and  utterly  unscientific  method  of 
registering  land  titles.  In  Prussia  a  very  much 
better  system  prevails  and  in  large  parts  of  the 


112  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

British  Empire  the  Torrens  System,  which  is  the 
nearest  ideal  yet  conceived,  is  widely  in  force,  and 
greatly  to  the  benefit  of  everybody  and  every- 
thing, except,  possibly,  a  few  jack-leg  lawyers 
who  must  depend  upon  patronage  of  this  sort  for 
support.  With  us  every  time  a  piece  of  real  estate 
is  transferred,  or  a  loan  is  made  on  it,  a  lawyer 
must  be  paid  to  investigate  the  title — he  going  to 
the  court-house  and  searching  through  musty  rec- 
ords of  wills  and  deeds  for  generations  back,  and 
every  time  the  land  changes  hands  the  same 
dreary,  expensive  and  increasingly  difficult  task 
must  be  repeated:  the  same  identical  work  re- 
peated time  after  time  to  no  good  purpose  what- 
ever. By  the  Torrens  System  the  State  once  for 
all  makes  a  thorough  investigation  of  title,  reg- 
isters it  in  prescribed  fashion,  and  guarantees  the 
title,  a  small  percentage-fraction  tax  from  each 
purchaser  sufficing  to  create  a  fund  large  enough 
for  the  State  to  reimburse  the  purchaser  in  the 
rare  case  of  a  mistake.  By  this  system  farmers 
are  enabled  to  borrow  money  on  land  and  to 
make  transfers  of  land  as  easily  as  of  cotton  mill 
stock,  while  the  saving  to  persons  buying  and 
selling  any  kind  of  real  estate  is  enormous.  A 
lawyer  told  me  a  short  time  ago  that  he  knew  of 


ECONOMIES  AMERICA  SHOUI<D  I.EARN.         II 3 

tracts  of  land  one-fourth  of  whose  total  value 
had  been  spent  in  oft-repeated  title  investiga- 
tions— a  new  investigation  being  required,  under 
our  foolish  and  unscientific  system,  with  each 
change,  or  prospective  change,  of  ownership. 

A  number  of  American  States  have  wisely 
adopted  the  Torrens  System  by  providing  for  the 
investigation  and  registration  of  title  under  its 
provisions  every  time  an  estate  passes  through 
the  courts  (this  meaning  that  in  one  or  two  gen- 
erations practically  all  estates  would  be  registered 
under  the  Torrens  System  with  practically  no 
extra  expense),  but  in  the  South  no  strong  and 
aggressive  champion  of  the  plan  has  yet  appeared 
save  Hon.  Eugene  C.  Massie,  of  Richmond,  Va. 
It  is  an  excellent  platform  on  which  to  send  some 
strong  man  to  your  Legislature — some  man  who 
is  not  afraid  to  stand  for  an  important  reform, 
even  though  through  it  a  thousand  or  two  law- 
yers of  the  commoner  sort,  Othello-like,  do  find 
their  occupation  gone,  and  are  thereby  forced 
into  work  of  some  real  service  to  mankind. 


xr. 

Switzerland — Two  Weeks  Among  Lakes, 
Peaks,  Glaciers,  Clouds,  and  Snows. 

Brigue,  Switzerland. 

I  think  I  spoke  rather  sHghtingly  in  my  last 
letter  of  coming  to  Europe  to  see  scenery,  but 
that  was  before  I  left  Germany. 

I  had  not  then  seen  the  Schaffhausen  Falls  of 
the  Rhine,  no  less  beautiful  than  Niagara,  though 
not  so  majestic  and  impressive. 

I  had  not  then  seen  Lucerne,  girt  about  with 
its  beautiful  Alpine  peaks  and  nestling  beside  one 
of  the  loveliest  and  clearest  lakes  in  all  the 
world,  from  its  blue  waters  rising  the  sheer  walls 
of  massive,  heaven-kissing  mountains — moun- 
tains that  tower  high  above  you  in  a  rugged 
grandeur  which  contrasts  strikingly  with  the  se- 
rene beauty  of  the  lake  itself. 

Majestic  Mount  Jungfrau  and  Beautiful  Lake 
Geneva. 

I  had  not  then  seen  titantic  Mount  Jungfrau, 
shouldering  out  the  sky  with  its  eternal  mantle 
of  snow  while  the  thick  clouds  gradually  un- 
veiled its  glories  to  our  eyes:  first  the  great  cap 
breaking  out  fitfully  against  the  sky  far  up  above 


TWO  AUGUST  WEEKS  IN  SWITZERLAND.      II5 

the  fleecy  cloud-masses,  and  then  more  and  more 
of  the  great  giant  of  mountains  coming  into  view 
until  the  whole  majestic  form,  dazzling  in  the 
sunlight,  awed  us  with  its  solemn  vastness.  There 
came  to  mind  that  passage  in  the  Bible  in  which 
Moses  asked  to  see  the  Almighty's  face,  and  the 
Lord  put  him  in  a  cleft  in  the  rock  and  let  but  a 
part  of  His  beauty  pass  before  him,  lest  the 
great  leader  of  Israel  should  be  overpowered  by 
viewing  too  much  glory  at  once :  so  was  majestic 
Jungfrau  gradually  unveiled  before  our  eyes. 

I  had  not  then  seen  Lake  Geneva,  beautiful 
beyond  the  power  of  words  to  describe,  breaking 
upon  our  sight,  as  we  came  from  the  tunnel's 
mouth,  like  a  vision  of  Paradise.  The  day  was 
perfect,  and  but  a  few  long,  lazy  summer  clouds 
nestled  indistinctly  against  the  far  horizon,  the 
sheen  of  the  water  mingling  with  them  until  it 
was  impossible  to  distinguish  where  lake  ended 
and  sky  began,  a  fairylike  sailboat  drifting  idly 
on  the  bosom  of  the  waters  completing  the  scene 
and  making  it  so  ethereal  that  one  seemed  to  have 
come  at  last  to  the  land  of  the  lotus-eaters,  the 
dreamy  rest-land  where  it  is  always  afternoon. 
Only  the  Catalina  Islands  off  the  coast  of  Cali- 
fornia have  brought  to  my  vision  a  scene  so  little 


Il6  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

of  the  earth,  earthy,  so  charged  with  the  beauty 
and  charm  of  the  fabled  isles  of  Hesperides. 

A  Belated  Process  of  Creation. 

Nor  had  I  then  seen  the  glaciers,  those  great 
mills  of  the  gods  that  do  indeed  grind  slowly  but 
grind  exceedingly  small :  working  with  the  calm 
patience  of  eternity,  so  quietly  and  with  such 
supreme  scorn  of  man's  feverish  haste  in  his  little 
lifetime  that  long  generations  of  puny  men  and 
women  came  and  went  before  they  learned  that 
these  titantic  ice-rivers  actually  move  at  all — 
these  colossal  masses,  miles  in  length  and  in 
width,  that  wear  down  the  mountain  sides  with 
the  relentlessness  of  Time  and  gripping  the 
mightiest  boulders,  either  grind  them  into  pow- 
der, break  them  into  a  thousand  fragments,  or 
carry  them  in  a  resistless  clutch  far  away  from 
the  place  where  they  were  found. 

It  is  almost  as  if  I  were  seeing  one  of  the  be- 
lated processes  of  creation,  looking  as  I  do  upon 
one  of  the  primal  forces  of  the  earth ;  for  it  was 
with  such  forces  that  the  Almighty  Power  (only 
with  strength  and  fury  ten  thousand  times  more 
striking)  wrought  out  the  earth  in  the  long  ages 
before  He  gave  man  dominion  over  the  finished 


TWO  AUGUST  WEEKS  IN  SWITZERLAND.      II7 

work  of  creation — leveling  the  mountains,  hol- 
lowing the  sea-beds,  and  carving  out  the  conti- 
nents after  His  pattern. 

It  is  fitting,  then,  that  about  these  glaciers  the 
clouds  of  heaven  should  hover,  now  revealing 
and  now  concealing  peak  and  valley  and  hillside ; 
now  leaving  this  valley  in  darkness  while  the  ad- 
joining one  is  bright  with  sunshine;  clouds  now 
just  at  our  feet,  next  at  our  side,  next  just  above 
us.  And  amid  these  surroundings,  August  as  it 
is,  we  look  down  the  deep  crevasse  in  the  glacier, 
great  cracks  in  the  ice  thirty  or  forty  feet  in 
depth,  hear  the  thunder  of  an  occasional  ava- 
lanche of  snow  crashing  down  the  mountain- 
side, and  ourselves  play  snowball  with  one  an- 
other 1  And  yet,  strange  to  say,  all  those  wonder- 
ful things  long  promised  and  predicted  to  happen 
"on  a  cold  day  in  August"  do  not  seem  to  have 
come  true ! 

More  than  this,  "Beyond  the  Alps  lies  Italy," 
and  we  are  resting  to-night  at  Brigue,  prepara- 
tory to  traveling  by  coach  to-morrow  across  the 
famous  Simplon  Pass,  landing  us  at  Domodos- 
sola  in  time  to  see  the  sun  set  in  an  Italian  sky. 

European  scenery  is  worth  seeing.  I  would 
not  say  that  it  is  grander  than  the  Rockies,  and 


Il8  A  SOUtH:eRNER  IN  ^UROP^. 

for  sheer  loveliness  I  have  not  seen  the  equal  of 
California,  but  the  Alps  have  a  glory  such  as  few 
places  on  earth  can  equal  and  such  as  must  for- 
ever remain  among  the  choicest  memory-treasures 
of  all  who  have  the  good  fortune  to  see  them. 

Switzerland  the  Purest  Democracy  in  the  World. 

Nor  am  I  inclined  to  pass  by  the  Swiss  gov- 
ernment and  people  without  a  word  about  them, 
for  especially  in  the  form  of  government  is  there 
a  striking  similarity  between  Switzerland  and  the 
United  States.  This  little  mountain  country  is 
perhaps,  in  fact,  the  purest  democracy  in  the 
world,  the  same  intense  love  of  freedom  that  for 
centuries  has  made  them  honor  the  memory  of 
William  Tell  with  passionate  devotion,  exhibiting 
itself  in  the  governmental  machinery  with  which 
the  people  work  out  their  wishes.  When  the 
Swiss  federal  constitution  was  adopted  a  hundred 
years  ago,  the  emphasis  was  left  upon  State  sov- 
ereignty (as  it  seemed  to  have  been  left  in  a 
large  measure  in  the  American  Constitution  of 
1787).  Then  in  1847  (^s  in  America  in  1861) 
some  of  the  States  thought  their  rights  imperiled 
and  seceded,  but  in  Switzerland,  as  with  us,  the 
principle  of  a  strong  and  cflfective  national  gov- 


TWO  AUGUST  WEEKS  IN  SWITZERLAND.      1 19 

ernment  triumphed,  and  all  traces  of  friction  have 
long  since  subsided.  Be  it  also  said  that  in  both 
countries  constitutional  amendments,  adopted 
somewhat  by  force  and  irregularity,  followed  the 
conclusion  of  strife. 

My  purpose,  however,  is  not  so  much  to  review 
Swiss  history  as  to  direct  attention  to  the  present 
form  of  government.  Each  State  has  a  separate 
constitution  and  Legislature  as  with  us;  there 
are  upper  and  lower  houses  of  Congress  elected 
much  as  we  elect  ours,  but  instead  of  one  man  as 
President  with  almost  kingly  power  as  we  have, 
the  Swiss  Executive  consists  of  a  Federal  Council 
of  seven  members. 

How  Direct  Legislation  Works. 

It  really  doesn't  matter  much,  however,  what 
sort  of  Legislatures  or  Congress  or  Council 
Switzerland  has,  for  with  her  unique  plan  of 
direct  legislation  all  power  is  immediately  in  the 
hands  of  the  people  themselves — universal  man- 
hood suffrage  being  in  force. 

I  know  it  is  popular  in  some  quarters  to  deride 
the  initiative  and  the  referendum  on  account  of 
their  unfamiliar  names,  popular  among  some  in- 
telligent people  to  assume  ignorance  of  these  very 


I20  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

simple  and  very  effective  methods  of  government ; 
and  other  people,  who  get  all  their  opinions 
second-hand,  join  in  the  chatter  of  opposition  like 
the  Banderlog  monkeys  in  Kipling's  Jungle  Book. 
As  a  matter  of  cold  fact  and  reason,  however, 
direct  legislation  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than 
the  logical  and  inevitable  conclusion  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  democracy,  and  must  appeal  to  every 
man  who  believes,  as  I  do,  that  "the  remedy  for 
the  evils  of  democracy  is  more  democracy." 

What  then  is  the  Initiative?  Nothing  more 
nor  less  than  that  the  people,  without  waiting  for 
the  aid  or  consent  of  any  band  of  politicians  or 
other  powers  that  be,  may  "initiate"  (that  is, 
propose  or  inaugurate)  any  measure  which  they 
wish  voted  upon.  There  are  more  than  three 
million  people  in  Switzerland — about  as  many  as 
in  two  average  Southern  States — and  if  50,000 
people  join  in  a  petition  for  any  new  law  it  must 
be  submitted  to  popular  vote  at  the  following 
election. 

And  the  Referendum?  This  is  all  there  is  of 
it — simply  that  laws  may  be  "referred"  to  the 
people  for  settlement.  All  constitutional  amend- 
ments must  be  so  "referred"  to  the  people  for  ac- 
tion, and  more  than  this,  if  any  Legislature  or 


TWO  AUGUST  WE^EKS  IN  SWITZERLAND.      121 

Congress  passes  a  dangerous  and  unpopular  bill, 
a  certain  percentage  of  the  people  by  petition 
may  require  that  it  also  be  "referred"  to  popular 
vote  for  approval  or  rejection. 

This  is  direct  legislation — the  initiative  and 
referendum — and  in  Switzerland  it  is  working 
well,  both  in  the  separate  States  and  in  the  na- 
tional government.  Lowell,  in  his  admirable 
work  on  "Governments  and  Parties,"  correctly 
pronounces  the  Swiss  Confederation  "the  most 
successful  democracy  in  the  world,"  with  the 
most  intelligent  and  contented  citizenship  and 
the  most  economical  and  efficient  government  in 
all  Europe.  A  few  weeks  ago,  while  our  own 
Southern  States  were  still  agitated  over  the  pro- 
hibition question,  the  Swiss  people  had  up  for  set- 
tlement the  question  of  prohibiting  the  manufac- 
ture and  sale  of  absinthe,  an  especially  dangerous 
and  hurtful  intoxicant,  the  referendum  going 
against  the  further  sale  of  the  drink. 

How  the  Initiative  and  Referendum  Would  Help 
America. 

While  the  principle  of  direct  legislation  could 
not  be  applied  in  American  national  affairs,  ex- 
cept upon  very  momentous  questions,  there  ought 


122  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

to  be  some  such  way  by  which,  for  example,  the 
people  could  make  their  wishes  effective  in  such 
matters  as  the  popular  election  of  Senators,  while 
all  constitutional  amendments,  of  course,  ought 
to  be  submitted  to  popular  vote.  And  in  our 
State  and  municipal  governments  there  is  great 
room  for  the  expansion  of  the  direct  legislation 
idea.  Many  a  corrupt  boss  and  ringster  in  our 
cities,  and  in  some  of  our  rural  counties  as  well, 
would  find  himself  reduced  to  the  painful  neces- 
sity of  earning  a  living  by  honest  means,  if  the 
people  held  the  whip-hand  in  government  all  the 
time,  as  they  would  do  if  able  to  take  any  matter 
from  the  hands  of  an  unworthy  board  of  com- 
missioners or  aldermen ;  or  if  these  voters  might 
also  at  any  time  force  a  vote  upon  any  important 
public  reform  which  the  bosses  had  chosen  to 
ignore  or  delay. 

Several  years  ago  Oregon,  after  a  great  fight, 
led  by  one  determined,  resourceful  champion  (I 
believe  his  name  is  U'Ren),  put  the  principle  of 
direct  legislation  into  her  Constitution;  and  at 
the  State  election  there  two  months  ago  about  a 
dozen  important  measures  were  voted  on,  the 
system  giving  entire  satisfaction  to  everybody — 
except  the  old  bosses.     And  now  Oklahoma,  in 


TWO  AUGUST  WEKKS  IN  SWITZEIRI^AND.      1 23 

our  Southland,  with  a  progressiveness  that  prom- 
ises well  for  her  future,  has  followed  Oregon  and 
put  the  initiative  and  referendum  into  her  per- 
manent State  Constitution. 

It  has  long  been  a  matter  of  regret  with  me 
that  when  Senator  Tillman  and  his  followers 
undertook  the  remaking  of  politics  and  govern- 
ment in  South  Carolina  and  the  general  broaden- 
ing of  democracy  in  the  Palmetto  State,  they  did 
not  set  about  having  the  people  pass  directly 
upon  measures  rather  than  men;  or,  at  least,  upon 
measures  as  more  important  than  men.  In  al- 
most every  case  a  man  represents  a  variety  of 
attitudes  toward  a  variety  of  subjects,  and  the 
judgment  of  the  people  concerning  the  principles 
for  which  he  stands  is  so  warped  and  excited  by 
his  personal  qualities  and  by  extraneous  preju- 
dices and  emotions  that  the  expression  of  democ- 
racy through  such  means  is  entirely  inadequate. 

Oklahoma  and  Oregon  are  pioneers  among 
States  as  Switzerland  among  nations.  The  same 
forces  that  rejected  monarchies  and  set  up  the 
incomplete  democracies  of  our  time  will  continue 
to  lengthen  their  cords  and  strengthen  their 
stakes.  Given  an  intelligent  electorate  such  as 
are  the  Swiss  with  their  magnificent  school  sys- 


124  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

tern — one  of  the  best  in  Europe — and  direct  legis- 
lation is  the  most  effective  means  of  promoting 
public  virtue  and  increasing  the  efficiency  of  gov- 
ernment as  the  agent  of  the  people. 


XII. 
"  The  Grandeur  That  Was  Rome." 

Rome,  Itai.y. 

"Rome  r 

How  many  millions  of  men  and  women,  how 
many  generations  long  dead  and  forgotten,  how 
many  tribes  and  tongues  and  nations  have  heard 
the  word — sometimes  with  terror,  sometimes  with 
pride,  but  always  with  an  interest  such  as  no 
other  name  in  all  history  can  conjure  up — Rome, 
the  Eternal  City ! 

Rome,  the  Eternal  City! 

Standing  yesterday  in  the  Forum,  my  mind 
went  back,  back,  back  through  nineteen  centuries 
of  time — past  Washington  and  Napoleon  and 
Cromwell  and  Columbus  and  Luther  and  Charle- 
magne and  Alaric  and  Constantine  and  Nero — 
until  I  paused  in  fatigue  at  the  very  day-dawn  of 
the  Christian  Era  itself — and  yet,  there  still  was 
Rome,  imperial,  unrivaled,  the  mistress  of  the 
world : 

"And  it  came  to  pass  in  those  days  that  there  went 
out  a  decree  from  Caesar  Augustus  that  all  the  world 
should  be  taxed/' 

"Caesar     Augustus" — one    man — commanded ; 

"all  the  world"  obeyed.     From  the    Pillars  of 
10 


126  A  SOUTHE^RNER  IN  EUROPE. 

Hercules  on  the  west  to  the  Persian  Gulf  on  the 
east  the  marvelous  machinery  of  the  Roman  gov- 
ernment, the  greatest  that  the  world  had  known, 
was  set  in  motion;  and  in  far-away  Palestine 
Joseph,  a  carpenter  of  Nazareth,  and  his  wife 
answered  the  summons  that  all  tribes  obeyed  and 
went  up  to  Bethlehem  at  that  first  of  all  Christ- 
mas-tides. 

Thus  it  was  that  where  my  fatigued  memory 
halted — at  a  date  nineteen  centuries  old — a  de- 
cree of  the  Roman  Emperor  changed  the  birth- 
place of  the  Saviour  of  Mankind;  and  Rome 
was  even  then  hoary  with  age.  Centuries  had 
come  and  gone,  empires  had  risen  and  fallen, 
since  her  history  had  emerged  from  the  legen- 
dary period  of  wolf-suckled  Romulus  and  Remus, 
and  of  the  heroic  Horatii  and  Curatii.  The 
world-old  struggle  of  the  masses  for  equality,  the 
world-old  contest  between  wealth  and  democ- 
racy, had  been  fought  out:  a  century  and  a  half 
the  plebeians  or  common  people  had  struggled 
for  equal  political  rights,  for  the  fair  distribu- 
tion of  public  lands,  for  freedpm  from  oppressive 
taxation,  for  just  laws  for  the  poor  and  for  the 
debtor.  Tribe  after  tribe  and  nation  after  nation 
had    humbled    themselves    before    the    Roman 


THE  GRANDEUR  THAT   WAS  ROME.  1 27 

eagles;  proud  Carthage  itself,  after  a  struggle 
so  brave  as  to  win  the  admiration  of  the  ages, 
had  become  a  desolate  ruin ;  and  even  far-away 
Britain  had  acknowledged  the  flag  of  the  all- 
conquering  empire. 

It  is  hard  for  me  to  realize,  even  with  all  the 
ruins  around  me,  that  I  am  here  where  all  this 
world-history  was  made,  here  where  were  the 
heart  and  brain  of  human  society  from  whence 
went  throbbing  forth  those  impulses  of  govern- 
ment and  of  intelligence  that  not  only  affected 
all  mankind  in  those  long-gone  days,  but  have 
profoundly  influenced  all  succeeding  generations 
of  men.  Upon  this  narrow  stage  to  which  I  have 
come  the  world's  mightiest  dramas  have  been 
acted  and  the  world's  mightiest  names  have  won 
their  renown.  ''The  stones  in  the  streets  here 
have  heard  the  footsteps  of  Caesar  and  these 
walls  have  echoed  the  eloquence  of  Cicero  and 
Antony." 

The  Mightiest  Man  Who  Ever  Trod  This  Earth 
of  Ours. 

Let  us  look  about  us  for  a  moment. 
The  same  Csesar  Augustus  as  whose  subject 
our  Lord  was  born  is  represented  here  by  more 


128  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

than  one  ruinous  mass,  and  traces  of  the  work  of 
his  mighty  uncle,  the  immortal  Julius,  are  also 
here  before  us.  Not  only  are  the  outlines  of  the 
Basilica  Julia,  which  he  had  begun,  still  shown 
the  tourist,  but  here  is  the  "Temple  of  Caesar"  on 
the  spot  where  he  erected  a  new  oratorical  tri- 
bune and  from  which  his  own  funeral  was  held — 
Mark  Anthony  from  the  rostrum  delivering  that 
incomparably  adroit,  eloquent  and  powerful  ora- 
tion which  did  indeed  all  but  "move  the  stones  of 
Rome  to  rise  and  mutiny." 

My  mind  turns  from  the  funeral  scene,  how- 
ever, to  the  times  when  Caesar  in  the  Forum  and 
Capitol  here  "bestrode  this  narrow  world  like  a 
Colossus" — the  foremost  man  of  all  the  earth.  I 
may  not  go  so  far  as  to  say  with  John  Fiske  that 
"we  ought  to  be  thankful  to  Caesar  every  day 
that  we  live,"  but  the  tribute  of  F.  Marion  Craw- 
ford is  perhaps  not  too  high: 

"Of  all  great  men  who  have  leaped  upon  the  world  as 
upon  an  unbroken  horse,  who  have  guided  it  with  re- 
lentless hands,  and  ridden  it  breathless  to  the  goal  of 
glory,  Caesar  is  the  only  one  who  turned  the  race  into 
the  track  of  civilization  and,  dying,  left  mankind  a 
future  in  the  memory  of  his  past.  He  is  the  one  great 
man  of  all  without  whom  it  is  impossible  to  imagine 
history." 


THE  GRANDEUR   THAT   WAS  ROME.  1 29 

The  stones  of  this  Forum,  moreover,  whisper 
tales  to  us  that  had  grown  mystic  with  the  glamor 
of  seven  centuries  of  time  even  when  the  young 
Julius  Caesar,  two  thousand  years  ago,  first  felt 
his  blood  quicken  at  their  rehearsal. 

They  show  you  here  the  fabled  grave  of 
Romulus. 

They  show  you  memorials  erected  in  honor  of 
victories  in  the  Punic  Wars — that  terrible  con- 
flict lasting  through  four  generations  of  men 
and  more  than  a  century  of  time,  in  which  Rome 
and  Carthage  struggled  for  the  mastery  of  the 
world,  struggled  with  the  fierce  knowledge  that 
one  or  the  other  must  die  the  death,  the  contest 
ending  on  the  part  of  Rome  with  something  of 
the  cold  and  remorseless  brutality  with  which  a 
wild  beast  of  the  forest  wearies  out  the  life  of  his 
doomed  quarry. 

Here  runs  the  Sacred  Way  over  which  vic- 
torious Roman  generals,  coming  home  with  cap- 
tive princes  at  their  chariot  wheels,  were  honored 
almost  as  gods,  the  slave  beside  them  not  with- 
out reason  whispering  the  monitory  words,  "Re- 
member, thou  art  but  mortal!" 

It  is  useless,  however,  for  me  to  attempt  to  de- 
scribe even  the  more  notable  of  the  historic  Ro- 


130  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

man  ruins.  Yonder  is  the  Tarpeian  Rock  from 
which  the  aristocrats  flung  Marcus  Manlius  be- 
cause of  his  championship  of  the  rights  of  the 
people.  Sunday  I  went  into  the  Mamertine 
Prison  in  which  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul  are  said 
to  have  been  confined,  and  from  which  St.  Paul, 
brought  before  Nero  a  second  time,  and  fore- 
seeing perhaps  the  martyrdom  he  is  said  later  to 
have  suffered,  wrote  his  last  message  to  his  be- 
loved Timothy: 

"For  I  am  now  ready  to  be  offered  and  the  time  of 
my  departure  is  at  hand.  I  have  fought  a  good  fight, 
I  have  finished  my  course,  I  have  kept  the  faith;  hence- 
forth is  laid  up  for  me  a  crown  of  righteousness." 

The  Colosseum  and  the  Martyrs. 

We  have  been,  too,  to  the  Colosseum,  where 
70,000  of  the  converts  and  followers  of  the  early 
Apostles  gave  their  lives  for  their  faith.  "The 
gate  of  death"  through  which  their  mangled 
corpses  were  dragged  is  still  shown,  and  there 
comes  to  mind  the  pen-picture  drawn  by  F. 
Marion  Crawford  of  the  days  when  before  eighty 
thousand  brutal  men  and  women  these  Christian 
martyrs  were  brought  forth  to  be  torn  by  wild 
beasts — slender  girls  among  them  with  fair  faces, 
young  men  who  were  not  afraid  to  die,  grown 


131 

men  and  women  leaving  children  orphaned  and 
friendless,  and  old  men  and  women  with  white 
hair  and  wrinkled  faces:  all  condemned  by  mon- 
sters who  respected  neither  age  nor  sex,  and  all 
willing  to  die  for  the  Master  whose  name  they 
had  taken: 

"And  then  the  wildest,  deadliest  howl  of  all  on  that 
day;  a  handful  of  men  and  women  in  white,  and  one 
girl  in  the  midst  of  them;  the  clang  of  an  iron  gate 
thrown  suddenly  open;  a  rushing  and  leaping  of  great 
lithe  bodies  of  beasts,  yellow  and  black  and  striped,  the 
sand   flying    in    clouds    behind    them,    a    worrying    and 

crushing  of  flesh  and  bones sharp  cries,  then  blood, 

then  silence  ....  the  wild  beasts  driven  out  with 
brands  and  red-hot  irons  step  by  step,  dragging  name* 
less  mangled  things  in  their  jaws." 

It  is  interesting  to  speculate  as  to  what  per- 
centage of  us  who  call  ourselves  Christians  now 
would  have  been  willing  to  die  for  our  faith  in 
the  days  of  that  terrible  persecution,  or  how 
many  of  us  would  even  have  been  willing  to 
endure  the  everyday  gibes  and  insults  which  the 
early  converts  had  to  bear.  Over  on  the  Palatine 
Hill  yesterday  our  guide  told  us  of  a  drawing 
found  on  the  walls  there:  a  caricature  of  Christ 
on  the  cross  with  the  head  of  an  ass  for  that  of 
Jesus.  It  was  insults  such  as  these  that  the  early 
Christians  had  to  endure. 


132  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

The  rapid  degeneracy  of  the  Church  after  the 
fourth  century,  however,  is  also  suggested  as  we 
visit  the  edifice  in  which  the  Emperor  Constantine 
is  said  to  have  been  baptized.  Christianity  be- 
coming the  religion  of  the  rulers,  it  became  easy 
and  popular  as  paganism    had   formerly    been. 

How  the  Barly  Church  Degenerated. 

"The  pagan  empire  became  Christian,"  as  one 
historian  well  says,  "but  the  Christian  church 
became,  to  some  degree,  imperial  and  pagan. 
The  gain  enormously  exceeded  the  loss ;  but  there 
did  take  place,  naturally  and  inevitably,  a  sweep- 
ing change  from  the  earlier  Christianity."  Chris- 
tianity became  formal  as  paganism  had  been; 
it  began  persecutions  as  cruel  as  paganism  had 
practiced. 

"Christian  bishops  began  to  adopt  the  gorgeous  cere- 
monial of  the  pagan  worship.  The  burning  of  incense, 
the  laying  on  of  hands,  the  sprinkling  with  holy  water, 
the  confession  of  sins  to  the  priest,  the  processions,  the 
decoration  of  images,  the  prostrations  before  the  priest, 

etc.,  etc.,  are  all  in  their  origin  pagan  observances 

Christianity  having  thus  become  pagan  in  outward  form, 
gradually  lost  its  inner  life.  The  spirit  of  Christ  no 
longer  inspired  it.  Popes,  enthroned  at  Rome,  were 
more  concerned  with  politics  than  with  religion;  more 
eager  to  acquire  power  than  to  save  souls.  The  dream 
of  Catholic  empire  had  seized  them,  and  they  aspired  to 


133 

erect  anew  the  throne  of  the  Caesars The  Pope 

being  thus  ambitious,  the  Church  sought  wealth,  oflBces, 
places  of  influence  on  every  hand.  The  princes  of  the 
Church  became  as  worldly  and  as  arrogant  as  the  prin- 
ces of  the  State.  They  led  armies,  they  built  palaces, 
they  lived  dissolute  lives.  Duty  was  almost  a  forgotten 
word." 

Going  on  in  degeneracy  until  the  Pope  began 
to  sell  indulgences  in  order  to  pay  off  the  enor- 
mous debt  incurred  in  building  St.  Peter's  here, 
Martin  Luther  and  other  leaders  of  the  Reforma- 
tion aroused  all  Christendom  with  a  plea  for 
primitive  Christian  ideals,  and  started  a  move- 
ment which  not  only  created  new  sects,  but 
stopped  many  vicious  tendencies  in  the  old  or- 
ganization as  well. 

Such  are  some  snapshots  of  Rome  and  of  the 
history  they  call  up;  but  this  letter  is  less  satis- 
factory than  any  other  that  I  have  written.  I  am 
trying  to  write  of  Rome  in  one  article — and  one 
would  not  have  space  enough  in  a  dozen  books. 

Saturday  I  sail  from  Naples  for  home.  The 
next,  and  probably  the  last,  of  my  letters  from 
abroad  will  deal  with  some  further  impressions 
of  Rome  and  some  general  observations  on  Euro- 
pean as  contrasted  with  American  life. 


XIII. 

What  Rome  and  Pompeii  Can  Teach  Us. 

Naples,  Italy. 
Yesterday  we  left  Rome,  and  to-day  finds  me 
in  Naples,  but  not  even  the  beauty  of  its  "blue 
Vesuvian  bay"  and  of  the  surrounding  moun- 
tains has  sufficed  to  break  the  spell  of  the  Eternal 
City.  My  mind  still  goes  back  to  the  seat  of  the 
greatest  empire  of  all  history,  and  to  the  mighty 
figures  who  once  trod  the  ways  over  which  I  have 
walked  these  last  few  days.  The  world  may 
stand  a  million  years,  but  their  deeds  will  not  be 
forgotten,  and  the  words  "July"  and  "August" 
will  not  endure  longer  than  the  fame  of  Julius 
and  Augustus  Caesar,  in  whose  honor  these 
months  were  named. 

What  Made  the  Roman  Great. 

But  what  gave  Rome  its  greatness?  This  is  a 
pertinent  inquiry — especially  pertinent  for  us  in 
America  who  dream  dreams  of  a  like  leadership 
among  the  nations  of  the  earth,  and  pertinent  for 
us  in  the  South  who  would  have  our  section  con- 
tribute its  full  share  to  the  greatness  of  our  com- 
mon country.    And  the  answer  is  one  that  per- 


WHAT  ROME  AND  POMPEII  TEACH  US.        1 35 

haps  may  give  us  more  cause  for  pause  and  for 
thought  than  for  pride. 

Unquestionably,  more  than  anything  else,  the 
quality  that  made  the  Roman  great  was  regard 
for  law.  He  could  make  law  and  obey  law ;  and 
because  he  could,  he  won  dominion  over  ten  thou- 
sand tribes  that  lacked  this  power. 

"The  merit  of  the  Greek  was  his  individuality;  of  the 

Roman,  his  submission  to  law Resolutely  the 

Italian  surrendered  his  own  personal  will  for  the  sake 
of  freedom,  and  learned  to  obey  his  father  that  he 
might  know  how  to  obey  the  State." 

More  loudly  then  than  about  anything  else 
does  Rome  speak  to  us  in  appeal  for  respect  for 
law,  the  rock  on  which  she  built  her  greatness — 
and  it  is  a  lesson  that  we  in  this  day  of  lynching, 
night-riding  and  mob  outbreaks  shall  do  well  to 
take  to  heart. 

With  his  mother's  milk  indeed  did  the  young 
Roman  imbibe  this  spirit.  He  was  born  into  a 
home  in  which  the  father  ruled,  with  affection,  of 
course,  but  with  authority  unquestioned  over  both 
wife  and  children.  And  this  authority  lasted  as 
long  as  life  itself.  A  father  could  refuse  even  a 
grown  son  or  daughter  the  right  to  buy,  sell  or 
acquire  any  property ;  all  their  earnings  belonged 


136  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

to  the  father,  if  he  chose  to  take  them;  and  he 
could  imprison  or  scourge  a  son  without  any 
court  or  officer  having  right  to  interfere;  much 
the  same  power  with  regard  to  the  wife  being 
also  his. 

How  Respect  for  Law  Brought  Dominion  Over 
the  Lawless. 

Under  such  conditions  the  young  Roman,  from 
his  very  infancy,  learned  obedience  to  authority, 
and  he  grew  up  with  a  regard  for  law  and  order 
that  made  him  the  ruler  of  the  world.  Master  of 
himself,  he  became  master  of  every  tribe  that  had 
not  learned  the  ancient  lesson  of  obedience  and 
restraint;  for  always  the  mob  must  go  down  be- 
fore the  onslaught  of  disciplined  troops,  and  al- 
ways the  people  who  give  way  to  mob  rule  must 
surrender  to  the  people  who  unflinchingly  "ren- 
der unto  Caesar  the  things  that  are  Caesar's."  In 
Rome  the  ideal  citizen  was  stern  Brutus  who  as 
judge  could  sentence  his  own  son  to  death  for 
violating  the  law  the  father  had  sworn  to  enforce ; 
and  almost  the  only  outbreaks  of  the  mob  I  re- 
call in  Rome  were  those  against  rulers  who 
seemed  to  be  taking  the  law  into  their  own  hands 
or  exercising  power  beyond  their  authority. 


WHAT  ROME  AND  POMPEII  TEACH  US.         1 37 

If  we  forget  everything  else  about  Rome,  there- 
fore, let  us  not  forget  this:  It  was  regard  for 
law,  more  than  any  other  one  qimlity,  that  gave 
her  greatness. 

In  other  countries  and  cities  in  ancient  times 
the  poorer  folk  rose  in  violence  now  and  then  to 
demand  their  rights,  and  then  were  beaten  back 
only  to  find  their  last  state  worse  than  their  first. 
But  in  Rome  the  plebeians  fought  their  way  to 
independence  and  to  leadership  by  legal  and 
orderly  means,  and  at  length  won  the  coveted 
prize.  Gradually  they  won  citizenship,  then  lim- 
ited suffrage,  then  the  right  of  veto,  then  the 
right  of  legal  intermarriage  with  the  patricians, 
and  then  the  slow  abolition  of  many  special  privi- 
leges long  enjoyed  only  by  the  aristocrats. 

The  Greatest  Work  of  Julius  Caesar. 

There  are  no  nobler  figures  in  history  than  the 
Gracchi,  the  earliest  reformers  who  gave  their 
lives  in  this  long  struggle  for  the  rights  of  the 
people.  The  public  lands  had  been  gobbled  up 
by  the  wealthy  classes,  and  as  the  penalty  for 
their  efforts  to  get  a  fair  distribution,  the  two 
brothers  in  the  end  gave  up  their  lives.  It  was 
Julius  Caesar  more  than  any    other  man    who 


138  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

finally  wrested  from  the  Roman  plutocracy  its 
unfair  advantages,  and  in  this  work  he  proved 
himself  even  greater  as  a  constructive  statesman 
than  he  was  as  a  conqueror,  and  won  for  himself 
his  greatest  claim  to  undying  fame  and  honor. 
The  nobles  who  had  stolen  great  estates  from 
the  public  lands  had  to  give  way  to  small  farmers 
under  Caesar's  homestead  law.  Immense  slave 
plantations,  crushing  out  free  labor  and  degrad- 
ing it,  had  been  the  rule,  but  Csesar  decreed  that 
every  landlord  should  use  at  least  one-third  free 
labor.  Finding  interest  sometimes  as  high  as  48 
per  cent,  Caesar  reduced  it  to  12  per  cent  maxi- 
mum, and  also  abolished  slavery  for  debt.  Find- 
ing idle  capitalists  living  on  usury,  he  decreed 
that  they  must  invest  at  least  one-half  their 
money  in  real  estate,  and  also  that  no  man  should 
hoard  more  than  $3,000.  Realizing  that  the  bur- 
dens of  taxation  were  not  equally  distributed,  he 
laid  heavy  customs  duties  upon  articles  of  luxury 
imported  by  the  rich.  Seeing  menace  to  the  em- 
pire in  provinces  governed  arbitrarily  from 
Rome,  he  gave  home  rule  to  them  all.  More 
than  this,  Caesar  found  Rome  with  only  450,000 
of  her  people  allowed  to  vote  and  extended  the 
franchise  to  over  4,000,000,  thus  insuring  the 


WHAT  ROME  AND  POMPEII  TEACH  US.         1 39 

permanence  of  the  reforms  he  had  instituted  for 
the  benefit  of  the  masses. 

How  Equity  and   Tolerance  Promoted  Roman 
Supremacy. 

And  I  should  say  that  next  to  the  Roman  re- 
gard for  law,  nothing  else  contributed  so  much 
to  her  greatness  as  this  growing  recognition  of 
the  rights  of  the  common  man,  and  the  steady 
increase  of  legal  checks  upon  the  rapacity  of  her 
Rockefellers  and  Harrimans  and  Goulds.  All 
Roman  history  sheds  light  upon  our  own  public 
problems,  and  in  so  far  as  they  are  attempting  to 
curb  predatory  wealth,  Roosevelt  in  the  Republi- 
can Party,  and  Bryan  in  the  Democratic,  and 
Watson  in  the  Populist,  in  America  to-day,  are 
fighting  battles  as  old  as  the  memory  of  Caesar. 

There  is  another  source  of  Roman  greatness 
that  I  should  not  fail  to  mention  along  with  her 
regard  for  law  and  her  checks  upon  plutocracy, 
and  that  is  her  tolerance  of  all  religious  sects — 
a  record  marred  only  by  a  few  bloody  years  of 
persecution  of  the  early  Christians.  No  one  who 
travels  through  Europe  and  sees  how  the  perse- 
cution of  the  Huguenots  enfeebled  France,  and 
how  the  Inquisition  gave  Spain  hopeless  dry  rot, 


140  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

and  how  religious  warfare  held  back  Germany 
for  centuries  and  laid  waste  many  of  its  fairest 
provinces — no  one  seeing  all  this  can  fail  to  ap- 
preciate how  much  her  freedom  from  religious 
intolerance  meant  to  Roman  supremacy.  This 
point  cannot  be  too  strongly  emphasized. 

Good  Roads  Strengthened  the  Empire. 

And  then  in  the  fourth  and  last  place,  I  would 
mention  as  one  of  the  main  bulwarks  of  Roman 
strength  her  magnificent  system  of  public  high- 
ways. A  few  days  ago  I  went  out  over  the  world- 
famous  Appian  Way,  a  road  built  by  Appius 
Claudius  in  312  B.  C,  and  over  which  therefore 
ten  generations  had  already  come  and  gone  when 
Christ  was  born.  I  can  not  do  better  here  than 
to  quote  from  a  modern  historian,  referring  as 
he  does  to  this  same  Appian  Way  and  to  the  great 
good  roads  system  of  which  it  was  a  part : 

"Afterward  all  Italy,  and  then  the  growing  empire 
outside  Italy,  was  traversed  by  a  net-work  of  such 
roads.  Nothing  was  permitted  to  obstruct  or  divert 
their  course.  Mountains  were  tunneled,  rivers  bridged, 
marshes  spanned  by  miles  of  viaducts  of  masonry.  They 
were  smoothly  paved  with  huge  slabs,  over  some  two 
feet  of  gravel,  to  the  width  of  eighteen  feet,  making  the 
best  means  of  communication  the  world  was  to  see  until 
the    time    of    railroads.     They    were    so    carefully    con- 


WHAT  ROME!  AND  POMPEH  TEACH   US.         I4I 

structed,  too,  that  their  remains,  in  good  condition  to- 
day, still  'mark  the  lands  where  Rome  has  ruled.'  Pri- 
marily they  were  designed  for  military  purposes;  but 
of  course  they  facilitated  all  intercourse  and  helped  to 
bind  Italy  together  socially." 

In  the  Buried  City  of  Pompeii. 

But  here  I  am  in  Naples,  and  however  reluct- 
ant I  am  to  do  so,  time  and  space  demand  that  I 
take  my  thoughts  away  from  Rome.  Naples  it- 
self is  certainly  worthy  of  a  paragraph,  its  beauti- 
ful location  and  environment  having  given  rise 
to  the  popular  saying,  "See  Naples  and  die." 
After  traversing  its  foul  and  squalid  streets,  how- 
ever, I  am  more  impressed  by  the  parallel  re- 
mark of  quite  a  different  tenor  made  by  a  lady 
in  our  party: 

"Smell  Naples  and  die." 

What  has  interested  me  far  more  than  Naples 
itself  is  the  buried  city  of  Pompeii  which  I  have 
visited  to-day.  Pompeii  was  a  town  about  the 
size  of  Raleigh,  Columbia,  Montgomery  or  Jack- 
son— 20,000  to  30,000  people — and  the  eruption 
from  Vesuvius  that  buried  it  in  ashes  and  de- 
stroyed the  lives  of  probably  10,000  people,  took 
place  more  than  eighteen  hundred  years  ago: 
at  a  time  when  men  who  had  seen  the  Christ 

11 


142  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

were  yet  alive  and  when  the  old  gods — Fortuna, 
Mercury  and  Jupiter  were  yet  worshipped  here 
in  temples  which  have  only  been  brought  to  light 
again  within  the  last  century. 

I  have  seen  few  more  interesting  places  in  all 
Europe  than  this  piece  of  artificially  preserved 
c-ntiquity.  Of  course,  Rome  is  older  than  Pom- 
peii, but  the  difference  is  that  the  ancient  in  Rome 
has  had  several  coatings  of  the  modern  super- 
added, while  in  Pompeii  time  has  preserved  an 
ancient  town  for  us  in  its  natural  colors.  There 
are  temples  in  Rome,  for  example,  in  which  the 
old  Graeco-Roman  gods  were  once  worshipped, 
but  for  centuries  now  they  have  acknowledged 
the  supremacy  of  Christianity,  while  in  Pompeii 
here  the  last  services  held  were  by  men  and 
women  who  knew  nothing  of  the  true  God  and 
to  whom  Christianity  was  a  new  and  contemptible 
doctrine,  its  founder  executed  like  a  common 
criminal  within  the  lifetime  of  many  who 
scorned  it. 

The  Most  Striking  Lesson  of  Pompeiian  Life. 

But  what  impressed  me  most  about  Pompeii 
was  just  this :  That  people  of  wealth  lived  in  as 
much  comfort  and  luxury  then  as  now;  it  is  only 


WHAT  ROME  AND  POMPEII  TEACH   US.         I43 

the  common  man,  th^e  poor,  man^  whom  the  eigh- 
teen centuries  since  have  helped.  Go  into  the 
spacious  palaces  along  the  main  streets  of  Pom- 
peii, with  their  wide  halls,  magnificent  mural 
paintings,  beautiful  courts,  elegant  bathrooms, 
banquet  halls  and  parlors,  and  you  will  realize 
that  not  even  on  Fifth  Avenue  to-day  do  our  mil- 
lionaires live  in  greater  comfort  than  did  the 
**four  hundred"  of  ancient  Pompeii. 

The  progress  of  civilization  these  last  eighteen 
hundred  years  therefore  has  done  little  to  raise 
the  standard  of  living  and  comfort  for  the  excep- 
tional man,  but  what  it  has  done  has  been  to 
raise  the  common  man  immeasurably  nearer  the 
comforts  which  only  the  extremely  fortunate  then 
enjoyed,    "'t   '*-:''-'   "^'1'"  ^  ■ 

The  great  itia'g^6s 'Of  J)^Je  were  then  only  bur- 
den-bearers for  the  privileged  classes ;  millions  of 
therri  were  slaves,  and  I  saw  to-day  the  figures  of 
many  of  the  slaves  (some  white,  some  black) 
who  were  burned  to  death  in  that  awful  holocaust 
centuries  ago.  Every  century  since  has  seen 
more  and  more  Of  the  common  people  raised  from 
slavery  and  poverty  to  independence  and  com- 
fort, and  in  this  fact  alone  we  have  the  keynote 


144  ^  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE). 

of  civilization,  the  master  purpose  of  all  prog- 
ress, the  symphony  of  the  ages. 

The  Moral  Progress  of  Mankind  and  Its  Expla- 
nation. 

There  is  another  lesson  that  my  visit  to  Pom- 
peii has  carried  home  to  me,  and  that  is  the  moral 
progress  of  mankind  since  the  destruction  of  this 
Italian  city.  In  the  gorgeous  palaces  here — right 
in  the  doorways  where  the  most  elegant  women 
of  Pompeii  passed  in  their  social  calls  and  their 
elaborate  social  functions — are  pictures  painted 
by  gifted  artists  and  yet  so  vulgar  that  not  even 
the  lowest-browed  negro  in  the  South  would  per- 
mit them  in  his  home  to-day.  The  foremost  citi- 
zens of  Rome  and  Pompeii  then  practiced  im- 
moralities and  countenanced  vulgarities  such  as 
our  crudest  mining  towns  would  not  now  toler- 
ate; and  both  in  the  Colosseum  and  the  palaces 
of  the  Roman  Emperors  themselves  I  have  seen 
the  vomitoriums  into  which  the  society  leaders 
of  the  empire,  having  eaten  to  satiety,  would  re- 
tire and  disgorge  themselves  in  order  to  eat 
again — an  example  of  beastliness  that  I  should 
hardly  have  believed  possible. 

I  leave  Pompeii  then — and  Europe,  too,  for  I 


WHAT  ROME  AND  POMPEII  TEACH   US.         I45 

sail  for  home  to-morrow — with  the  thought  of 
how  the  spirit  of  Christianity,  hampered  though 
it  has  been  by  many  pagan  survivals  and  a  thou- 
sand shackling  influences  of  man's  device,  has 
nevertheless  worked  steadily  through  all  these 
generations,  not  only  for  this  lifting  up  of  the 
common  man  from  slavery  to  manhood  and  inde- 
pendence, but  also  for  the  elevation  of  the  moral 
standards  of  the  race  from  the  vulgarity  and 
hopelessness  of  ancient  paganism  to  the  purity 
and  aspiration  of  our  modern  Christian,  faith. 

From  the  standpoint  of  the  student  of  history 
who  once  gets  a  glimpse  of  how  the  world  lived 
and  thought  twenty  centuries  ago,  it  is  undeniable 
that  in  this  Faith  we  have  the  best  heritage  that 
the  ages  have  bequeathed  to  us,  the  great  guide 
and  anchor  that  all  ancient  civilizations  lacked, 
the  standard  and  criterion  in  default  of  which 
they  drifted  in  uncertainty,  and  the  vision  in  the 
absence  of  which  they  perished. 

The  Coming  Mastery  of  America. 

I  shall  now  refer  to  one  other  idea  to  which  I 
have  failed  to  give  sufficient  emphasis  in  my 
travel  letters,  and  with  that  I  am  done.  This  is 
my  growing  conviction  of  the  coming  mastery  of 
America.     As   Mr.   H.    G.    Wells,   the   English 


146  A  SOUTHERNER  IN   EUROPE. 

novelist,  declared  sometime  ago:  "It  seems  to 
me  that  in  America,  by  sheer  virtue  of  its  size,  its 
traditions,  and  the  habit  of  initiative  in  its  people, 
the  leadership  of  progress  must  ultimately  rest." 
Such  a  conviction,  it  seems  to  me,  can  not  fail  to 
impress  itself  upon  any  one  who  studies  the  basic 
elements  of  national  greatness.  I  do  not  think 
that  one  should  be  accounted  a  jingo  or  braggart 
when  he  says  that  a  few  generations  hence  the 
United  States  must  become  an  incomparably 
greater  power  than  England  or  Germany — or 
even  than  England  and  Germany  combined.  This 
seems  to  me  to  be  foreordained  in  the  very  nature 
of  things. 

Take  our  tremendous  area,  all  of  it  in  the 
North  Temperate  Zone,  as  fit  a  place  of  human 
habitation  as  Europe,  and  with  resources  still 
comparatively  virgin  in  spite  of  the  wastefulness 
with  which  we  have  handled  them.  The  tendency 
of  population  is  to  equalize  itself,  certainly  with- 
in the  same  zones  of  temperature,  and  the  North 
Temperate  Zone  is  not  only  the  home  of  the  domi- 
nant races  of  the  world,  but  must  remain  so  be- 
cause of  the  small  land  area  in  the  South  Temper- 
ate and  the  unfitness  of  the  other  zones  for  rul- 
ing civilizations.     The  United  States,  therefore, 


WHAT  ROME  AND  POMPEII  TEACH   US.         I47 

being  as  yet  the  most  sparsely  settled  g^eat  area 
available  for  the  white  races,  must  ultimately  be- 
come as  populous  as  Europe.  Ultimately,  I  say, 
having  reference  to  "the  long  result  of  time"  and 
remembering  that  civilized  man  is  yet  very  young 
The  physical  earth,  they  tell  us,  is  millions  of 
years  old,  and  yet  our  little  moment  of  known 
human  history  runs  back  but  a  little  over  six 
thousand  years:  sixty  centenarians  hand  in 
hand  starting  with  us  would  reach  beyond  the 
time  of  Abraham.  All  civilization,  therefore,  has 
just  begun,  and  as  we  look  forward  to  "the  long, 
long  while  the  world  shall  last,"  and  think  of  the 
school  children  who  will  forget  which  lived  first, 
Pharaoh  or  Napoleon,  we  must  recognize  that  in 
a  comparatively  early  era  in  history  as  the  future 
will  know  it,  the  dominant  place  in  the  family  of 
nations  must  be  held  by  our  own  country. 

But  our  fundamental  advantage  in  land  area  is 
by  no  means  our  only  advantage  in  the  coming 
struggle  for  the  mastery  of  the  world.  Our  more 
democratic  society,  and  more  democratic  ideals, 
free  from  the  dead  hands  of  tradition  and  the 
paralyzing  influence  of  ancient  wrongs,  make  for 
a  larger  life  and  stronger  type  of  man  than  Eu- 
rope as  now  organized  can  possibly  know.    With 


148  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

US  no  man  must  follow  the  occupation  of  his 
father.  Abraham  Lincoln  was  not  a  rail-splitter 
because  his  father  split  rails ;  and  Robert  Lincoln 
is  not  President  of  the  Nation  because  his  father 
once  guided  the  ship  of  state.  We  have  no  titled 
aristocracy  to  waste  the  substance  of  our  labor- 
ers ;  no  class  born  to  rule  without  regard  to  merit 
or  ability.  Never  before  has  the  world  seen  a 
nation  dedicated  to  such  ideals  of  freedom  and 
equality,  and  it  is  not  strange  that  your  common 
man  in  America  goes  about  his  daily  tasks  with  a 
fine  enthusiasm  such  as  the  Old  World  worker 
never  knows. 

The  SoutWs  Opportunity. 

All  these  things  I  repeat,  therefore, — our  great 
area  of  habitable  land,  our  coming  supremacy  in 
point  of  population,  our  invigorating  ideals  of 
freedom  and  equality,  our  democratic  system  of 
education  and  of  government  which  frees  all 
talent  for  human  service  and  leaves  the  people 
unshackled  by  aristocratic  interference,  our  geo- 
graphical isolation  relieving  us  from  the  need  of 
a  standing  army — the  Old  Man  of  the  Sea  of 
every  European  nation,  and  our  unity  of  language 
and  government  making  commerce  and  communi- 


WHAT  ROME  AND  POMPEII  TEACH  US.         I49 

cation  possible  without  the  hampering  influences 
of  continually  changing  tariffs,  languages,  and 
monetary  systems — all  these  things  make  it  as 
plain  as  anything  recorded  in  the  book  of  destiny 
that  our  English  critic,  Mr.  Wells,  was  right 
when  he  declared  that  "in  America  the  leadership 
of  progress  must  ultimately  rest." 

As  sons  and  daughters  of  the  South,  it  should 
be  our  ambition,  the  ambition  of  all  Southerners, 
young  and  old,  simply  to  see  to  it  that  as  the 
scepter  of  world-power  comes  to  our  American 
nation,  not  the  least  influential  among  the  sec- 
tions of  our  mighty  country  shall  be  our  own 
Southern  States. 


XIV. 
How  the  South  May  Win  Leadership. 

On  Board  S.  S.  Cretic,  White  Star  Line. 

Europe  is  now  behind  me,  and  for  ten  days 
now  we  have  been  upon  the  high  seas,  going  as 
fast  as  our  mighty  engines  can  carry  us  on  the 
long,  long  way  from  Naples  to  New  York.  There 
are  yet  three  more  days  of  the  voyage. 

But  the  trip  has  not  seemed  long — all  too 
short,  in  fact;  and  there  is  general  regret  on 
shipboard  that  we  are  not  to  be  out  for  a  full 
week  longer.  Certain  it  is  that  few  travelers 
have  ever  been  more  favored  in  the  matter  of 
weather  than  we  have  been;  and  the  joy  of 
ocean  traveling,  as  everybody  knows,  depends 
largely  upon  the  weather. 

A  Glorious  Sea  Voyage. 

Barring  a  heavy  summer  shower  while  we 
were  anchored  at  the  Azores,  we  have  had  only 
fair  days  and  blue  skies,  with  breeze  enough 
most  of  the  time  to  make  the  temperature  delight- 
ful and  sunsets  more  gorgeous  than  are  ever 
seen  on  land,  because  the  most  glorious  tints  are 


HOW  THE  SOUTH  MAY  WIN  LEADERSHIP.     I5I 

nearest  the  horizon  and  obstructions  on  land  pre- 
vent one's  seeing  these  in  all  their  beauty.  But 
it  is  at  night  that  the  spell  and  charm  and  mystery 
of  the  sea  are  most  potent,  and  always  to  artist 
and  poet  the  thought  of  the  sea  suggests  the 
moonlight  upon  its  unresting  bosom.  Here  again 
we  have  been  peculiarly  favored,  for  the  moon 
was  new  just  before  we  left  Naples  and  i.^  now 
at  the  full,  and  to  sit  out  at  night  upon  the  upper 
deck  with  the  open  sky  above  you,  and  the  moon- 
light upon  the  waves  as  far  as  the  eye  can  reach — 
well,  this  is  almost  enough  to  wring  poetry  out 
of  a  wooden  Indian. 

Nobody  has  been  seasick,  so  far  as  I  have  ob- 
served; and,  in  fact,  our  party  has  come  to  the 
conclusion  that  seasickness  is  by  no  means  such 
a  terror  as  it  is  commonly  believed  to  be.  As 
one  of  my  friends  remarked:  "Think  what  a 
fool  I  have  been !  Here  I  have  waited  ten  years 
to  come  across,  dreading  the  ocean  voyage,  when 
it  is  really  the  finest  part  of  the  whole  trip  I" 

And  now  that  both  Europe  and  America  are 
far  away — so  far  away  that  we  can  almost  doubt 
the  existence  of  any  land  at  all — it  is  the  best  time 
that  I  shall  ever  have  perhaps  for  contrasting  the 
Old  World  and  the  New,  my  purpose  being  to 


152  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

see  what  we  of  the  new  countries  can  learn  from 
our  European  fatherlands. 

The  Two  Greatest  Lessons  Europe  Teaches  Us. 

Be  it  said  then,  in  the  beginning,  that  this  trip 
has  made  me  gladder  than  ever  that  I  am  an 
American,  much  as  it  has  taught  me  of  the  su- 
perior industrial  methods  of  many  European  peo- 
ples. If  we  learn  :  (i)  To  care  for  our  resources 
as  well  as  Europe  cares  for  hers,  and  (2)  to  edu- 
cate our  people  as  well  as  Germany  educates  hers 
the  time  must  soon  come  (as  we  count  time  in 
the  lives  of  nations)  when  the  United  States  will 
stand  the  acknowledged  leader  among  the  coun- 
tries of  the  world.  My  ambition  is  that  we  of 
the  South,  before  this  achievement  is  consum- 
mated, shall  make  our  section  the  foremost  sec- 
tion of  the  United  States,  and  therefore  the  fore- 
most section  of  what  must  become  the  foremost 
nation  of  the  earth. 

It  is  a  high  ambition,  and  yet  it  does  not  seem 
to  me  too  high  for  us  to  set  up  as  a  working  ideal. 
We  belong  to  a  race  that  has  won  the  mastery  of 
the  world,  and  to  the  best  branches  of  that  race. 
I  have  commented  in  former  letters  upon  the  re- 
markable similarity  of  the  names  seen  and  heard 


HOW  THE  SOUTH  HAY  WIN  LEADERSHIP.     I53 

in  English  and  Southern  towns — ten  times  as 
many  famiUar  surnames  on  the  business  signs  in 
English  towns  as  I  should  find  in  New  York  or 
Boston — and  this  is  but  one  evidence  of  the  oft- 
repeated  fact  that  the  purest  Anglo-Saxon  blood 
in  America  is  in  the  South.  From  masterful 
races  our  blood  has  come;  and  our  citizenship 
has  not  been  diluted  by  long  decades  of  immi- 
gration from  Southern  and  Eastern  Europe. 
Immensely  to  the  advantage  of  the  South  in  the 
long  struggle  for  supremacy  must  be  this  fact. 

The  Spiritual  Factor  in  Racial  Greatness. 

It  must  also  be  to  our  advantage  that  more 
largely  perhaps  in  the  Cotton  States  than  in  any 
other  section  of  the  world  to-day  is  the  old  Book 
of  Books  accepted  as  the  unquestioned  moral  and 
spiritual  criterion.  Much  more  strongly  Puritan 
now  than  even  New  England  itself,  the  South  is 
learning  what  New  England  did  not  learn  in 
time — how  to  combine  the  sterling  uprightness  of 
Puritanism  with  the  warmth  and  beauty  of  mod- 
ern culture.  To  keep  the  stronger  virtues  of 
Puritanism  and  yet  hold  on  to  tolerance  and  hos- 
pitality and  joyousness — this  is  the  character 
which,  it  seems  to  me,  the  South  should  set  itself 


154  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

to  develop  as  typical  of  the  Southerner;  and  for 
the  qualities  requisite  to  this  consummation  the 
Southern  man  is  noted.  That  we  have  gener- 
osity, geniality  and  hospitaUty  is  unquestioned; 
and  that  an  unusual  religious  instinct  is  also  ours 
it  takes  but  little  observation  in  other  sections 
to  prove.  I  have  traveled  from  the  Atlantic  to 
the  Pacific  in  America,  and  now  in  most  of  the 
leading  European  countries,  and  nowhere  have  I 
found  Sunday  observed  as  it  is  in  the  South,  the 
church  in  such  favor,  or  religion  so  much  a  part 
of  the  people's  lives.  It  will  be  well  indeed  if  the 
Church  with  us  shall  recognize  its  great  oppor- 
tunity, shall  lend  itself  to  the  occasion,  and  make 
itself  the  mightiest  factor  in  the  production  of 
that  ideal  character  of  which  I  have  been  writ- 
ing— the  character  which  will  combine  the  un- 
swerving uprightness  of  the  Puritan  with  the 
warmth  and  geniality  for  which  the  Southerner 
is  already  distinguished. 

I  mention  this  matter  at  some  length  because 
the  church  has  an  opportunity  in  the  South  such 
as  it  has  hardly  anywhere  else  in  the  world,  and 
because  upon  its  use  of  this  opportunity  depends 
in  a  large  measure  the  future  rank  of  our  sec- 
tion.   It  is  not  sentimentalism,  is  not  a  mere  pious 


HOW  THE  SOUTH   MAY  WIN  LEADERSHIP.     1 55 

generalization,  but  it  is  the  truth  of  history  that 
no  people  can  achieve  and  maintain  greatness  ex- 
cept by  adherence  to  rigid  moral  standards. 
When  the  old  Psalmist  said  centuries  ago, 
"Happy  is  that  people  whose  God  is  the  Lord," 
he  was  preaching  as  good  politics  as  religion. 

''Knowledge  is  Power''— And  It  Is  Read  of  All 
Men. 

There  is  another  thing,  as  I  intimated  in  the 
beginning,  to  which  we  must  give  attention,  and 
that  is  the  thorough  education  of  our  people.  The 
surest  sign  of  promise  for  our  future  in  all  our 
recent  history  is  the  campaign  for  better  schools 
which  has  made  such  wonderful  progress  in  the 
South  these  last  ten  years.  By  the  time  I  reached 
Italy,  after  traveling  in  half  a  dozen  other  Euro- 
pean countries,  I  had  been  so  much  impressed  by 
the  way  in  which  education  makes  itself  felt  in 
every  line  of  commerce  and  industry  that  I  ex- 
claimed :  ''A  careful  observer,  with  a  few  years 
of  travel,  ought  to  be  able  to  guess  a  country's 
percentage  of  illiteracy,  simply  by  an  hour's  ride 
through  the  farms  or  the  towns!" 

And  this  is  hardly  an  exaggeration.  The  hope 
of  the  South  is  in  the  education  of  its  people,  all 


156  A  SOUTHERNER  IN   EUROPE. 

its  people.  Every  ignorant,  inefficient  man,  white 
or  black,  in  a  community  makes  it  poorer,  makes 
everybody  in  the  community  poorer ;  and  if  he  can 
not  be  educated  to  do  good  work,  he  ought  to 
give  way  to  some  one  who  can  be  so  trained.  If 
the  South's  sons  are  illiterate,  if  your  sons  are 
illiterate,  no  other  qualities  can  save  them  from 
defeat  in  the  fierce  industrial  struggle  of  to-day. 
Our  aim  should  be  to  spend  still  more  money  on 
our  schools  and  to  make  them  train  more  and 
more  for  actual  life,  while  the  work  of  experi- 
ment stations,  farmers'  institutes,  demonstration 
workers,  farm  papers,  etc.,  in  educating  the  older 
farmers  who  have  passed  out  of  the  schools, 
ought  also  to  have  the  fullest  encouragement  a 
people  can  give. 

America  is  Too  Wasteful. 

There  is  one  other  thing,  moreover,  to  which 
we  can  not  give  too  earnest  heed,  and  that  is  the 
conservation  of  our  natural  resources.  I  have 
mentioned  this  in  a  previous  letter;  but  I  was  re- 
minded of  it  again  yesterday  when  a  distinguished 
Pennsylvanian  on  our  boat  told  me  of  his  son's 
trip  to  Germany  last  year  as  the  representative 
of  a  leading  American  industrial  institution  seek- 


HOW  the;  south  may  win  leadership.    157 

ing  information  as  to  the  methods  of  its  com- 
petitors abroad.  What  the  young  American 
found  and  reported  was  this:  that  the  American 
factory  had  the  advantage  in  nearness  and  cheap- 
ness of  raw  material,  in  the  thoroughness  and 
efficiency  of  machinery  and  equipment,  and  also 
in  the  skill  and  intelligence  of  its  workmen,  and 
there  was  but  one  thing  in  which  the  European 
excelled — economy.  The  American  factory  was 
more  wasteful. 

Of  almost  everything  the  same  thing  is  true. 
Lands,  forests,  mines — all  are  handled  with 
greater  care  and  economy  in  Europe  than  in 
America;  and  millions  of  people  make  a  living 
from  industries  that  our  people  would  laugh  at 
as  impossible.  In  Antwerp  I  saw  the  ragged 
bales  of  cotton  from  the  South  unloaded  at  the 
wharves — cotton  bought  at  eight  or  ten  cents  a 
pound;  but  the  ladies  of  our  party  tell  me  that 
when  the  lacemakers  whom  I  saw  working  there 
get  through  with  it,  it  brings  from  $5  to  $50  a 
pound.  If  the  South  would  only  utilize  its  wasted 
resources  and  neglected  opportunities — well, 
there  would  be  no  limit  to  our  possibilities. 

In  this  connection,  I  wonder  if  it  has  ever  oc- 
curred to  the  reader  that  the  eleven  Southern 
12 


158  A  SOUTHICRNER  IN  EUROPE. 

States  excluding  Texas — that  is  to  say,  Virginia, 
North  Carolina,  South  Carolina,  Georgia, 
Florida,  Tennessee,  Alabama,  Mississippi,  Louisi- 
ana, Arkansas  and  Oklahoma — have  a  larger 
area  than  Great  Britain,  France,  Germany,  Bel- 
gium, Holland  and  Switzerland  combined,  and  if 
these  ten  Southern  States  were  as  thickly  settled 
as  those  foreign  countries,  their  population  would 
be  160,000,000  instead  of  16,000,000?  Imagine 
nine  other  families  added  to  each  and  every  one 
family  you  now  know  in  your  neighborhood,  and 
you  will  get  some  idea  as  to  the  density  of  popu- 
lation in  Europe.  You  might  crowd  all  the  people 
in  the  United  States  to-day  into  Texas  and  it 
would  not  be  so  thickly  settled  as  Great  Britain. 

The  Bottom  Pacts  About  Immigration. 

It  is  partly  because  of  this  European  over- 
crowding, of  course,  that  they  have  such  a  con- 
stant stream  of  emigration  to  America;  and  in 
the  steerage  below  me  now  are  hundreds  of 
Southern  Italians — ^men,  women  and  children — 
reinforced  by  some  scores  of  others  taken  on  at 
the  Azores  Islands :  all  on  their  way  to  crowd  the 
slums  of  our  American  cities  and  to  tax  the  as- 
similative energies  of  the  American  nation.    This 


HOW  THE  SOUTH   MAY  WIN  LEADERSHIP.     1 59 

is  the  real  trouble  about  immigration — ^that  it  has 
utterly  changed  in  character  these  last  twenty- 
five  or  thirty  years.  Formerly  most  of  the  im- 
migrants came  from  England,  Scotland,  Ireland, 
Germany,  Holland,  Norway,  Sweden,  etc., — 
Teutonic  peoples  largely,  whose  fusion  through 
intermarriage  has  produced  our  strong,  forceful 
American  type;  and  classes  whose  coming,  with 
our  present  scarcity  of  population  in  the  South, 
would  not  be  to  our  disadvantage.  But  for  sev- 
eral years  past  our  immigrants  have  been  chiefly 
Italians,  Russians,  Hungarians,  Poles  and  other 
degenerate  stocks,  not  easily  assimilable  nor 
easily  fired  with  American  ideals.  This  is  the 
menace  in  present-day  immigration;  and  what  I 
have  seen  of  the  dirty,  chattering  lot  of  Italians 
on  the  decks  below  us  has  not  decreased  my 
sense  of  its  seriousness.  But  I  think  the  South 
should  welcome  new-comers  of  our  own  stock — 
Germans,  English,  Scotch,  French,  etc., — cer- 
tainly in  the  small  numbers  that  they  would 
come  to  us  under  the  most  favorable  circum- 
stances, and  especially  immigrants  from  the 
northwestern  section  of  the  United  States. 

Already  this  letter  has  grown  too  long,  and  I 
must  bring  it  to  a  close,  and  with  it  my  impres- 


l6o  A  SOUTHERNER  IN   EUROPE. 

sions  of  Europe.  Our  ship  is  even  now  sailing 
into  the  sunset,  and  not  many  hours  hence  I  shall 
be  once  again  beneath  the  Stars  and  Stripes — and 
you  can  not  fail  to  love  "Old  Glory"  better  for 
having  wandered  on  a  foreign  strand — and  soon 
thereafter  in  the  thick  of  things  in  our  Southland, 
in  which  alone,  of  all  parts  of  the  earth,  can  the 
ardent  Southerner  find  the  work  of  development 
that  seems  most  worth  doing,  the  tasks  that 
promise  most  in  service  to  our  race  and  our  kin. 
Even  in  far-away  Europe  the  South's  call  for 
the  service  of  her  sons  has  been  always  in  my 
ears,  and  always  my  uppermost  thought  has  been 
to  see  and  to  report,  not  the  merely  curious  or 
interesting  things,  but  the  things  from  which  our 
people  may  learn  lessons  that  will  help  in  South- 
em  development. 

My  Dream  of  the  Soiith's  Awakening. 

I  have  not  written  therefore,  I  repeat,  of  the 
merely  curious  objects,  nor  have  I  written  of  the 
wonders  of  art  and  sculpture  that  I  have  seen — 
nothing  of  Raphael's  work  or  Titian's  or  Murillo's 
or  Michael  Angelo's,  nothing  even  of  the  latter's 
magnificent  statues  at  the  de  Medici  tombs, 
though  I  gave  the  better  part  of  two  afternoons 


HOW  THE  SOUTH  MAY  WIN  IvEADERSHIP.     l6l 

to  enjoying  them.  I  can  not  describe  any  of 
these  masterpieces  adequately  if  I  should  try^ 
and  deep  as  is  the  impression  some  of  them  made 
upon  me,  even  deeper  is  the  longing  for  the  time 
when  out  of  our  own  Southland  shall  come  artists 
and  sculptors  and  poets — ^great  souls  of  genius 
and  talent  with  vision  clear  enough  and  feelings 
sensitive  enough  to  body  forth  in  imperishable 
form,  or  in  still  more  truly  imperishable  song,  the 
romance  of  our  ante-bellum  civilization,  the 
tragedy  of  our  Civil  War,  the  epic  of  our  rebuild- 
ing, the  patient  ideals  and  visions  which  must 
yet  give  us  a  great  future. 

A  Better  Agriculture  the  Only  Foundation  Upon 
Which  We  Can  Build. 

And  once  again  would  I  say  that  we  can  not 
have  these  finer  things  without  first  having  the 
more  substantial.  Culture  in  a  democracy  must 
be  based  upon  a  prosperous  and  intelligent  aver- 
age man.  We  can  not  have  the  splendors  of 
dome  and  tower  unless  we  first  go  down  into  the 
earth  and  lay  deep  the  foundations  of  our  struc- 
ture. We  can  not  have  the  American  Beauty 
rose  unless  we  first  give  attention  to  the  prosaic, 
everyday  earth  in  which  it  grows.    Sidney  Lanier 


l62  A  SOUTHERNER  IN  EUROPE. 

never  said  a  truer  thing  than  when  he  declared 
thirty  years  ago  that — 

"One  has  only  to  remember,  particularly  here  in 
America,  whatever  crop  we  hope  to  reap  in  the  future, — 
whether  it  be  a  crop  of  poems,  of  paintings,  of  sym- 
phonies, of  constitutional  safeguards,  of  virtuous  be- 
haviors, of  religious  exaltation, — we  have  got  to  bring 
it  out  of  the  ground  with  palpable  plows  and  with  plain 
farmer's  forethought,  in  order  to  see  that  a  vital  revolu- 
tion in  the  farming  economy  of  the  South,  if  it  is  ac- 
tually occurring,  is  necessarily  carrying  with  it  all  fu- 
ture Southern  politics  and  Southern  relations  and  South- 
ern art,  and  that,  therefore,  such  an  agricultural  change 
is  the  one  substantial  fact  upon  which  any  really  new 
South  can  be  predicated." 

Europe  is  behind  me.  To  it  belongs  the  past. 
America  and  the  South  await  me.  To  them  be- 
long the  future.  If  some  lessons  from  the  Euro- 
pean past  which  I  have  learned  and  of  which  I 
have  written  shall  contribute  in  any  measure  to- 
ward making  our  Southern  future  more  worthy 
of  our  people  and  of  their  ideals  and  opportuni- 
ties, my  purpose  will  have  been  attained  and  the 
keenest  pleasure  that  can  come  from  my  trip  will 
have  been  realized. 


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